sustainability – Susan Feathers

Food Security

… every day, 2,000 acres of farmland are lost to non-agricultural uses, many farms continue to lose topsoil at alarming rates; and one-third of America’s farmland may change hands in the next 15 years as aging landowners sell their properties. These trends jeopardize the future of agriculture and our environment. Farmland is essential for food production—the demand for which is expected to increase by 60% by 2050. But farmland is also essential for a wide array of ecosystem services on which our future depends.~ American Farmland Trust

The American Farmland Trust is where I first learned about the importance of land trusts as a means of conserving land for farming, forestry, and soil improvement. I was living in Bowling Green, Kentucky when I was learning about the organization and its goals. This was during the Pandemic years from 2019 – 2022. I was an avid supporter of Community Supported Farmers (CSF).

Land Trusts Help Young Farmers

My farm family was a young couple with a growing family. They supplied me and their subscribers with a beautiful box of fresh farm produce with occasional surprises like local jam or sauces. And during the Pandemic, this enterprising family delivered the produce to our door.

A land trust conserves farmland and leases it to farmers in long-term leases as long as they fulfill the terms of the lease. Some leases can be as long as 99 years and inheritable. With some, farmers can gain equity for buildings and equipment they invested in farming the land leased. This can be passed on to relatives. Land trust have formed to specifically address inequities such as farmable land being bought by industrial farming operations that drive up the cost of land. Young farmers wanting to do the right thing by the soil, water, and air often cannot find land they can afford to buy. A lease with a Land Trust makes it possible. Black Soil KY is an innovative agribusiness model.

No-Till Growers: the Innovators

Young farmers and entrepreneurs put together podcasts about regenerative, no-till farming. I helped them with a start up grant from the government to provide educational videos for farmers to learn the art and practice of regenerating their farmland or market gardens. Today, this is a nationally recognized nonprofit business: No-Till Growers.

During these heavy, Pandemic years, I found hope in Kentucky farmers, especially the young farmers. Most could not afford to buy land and thus joining a Land Trust allowed them to lease land long term and even gain equity on it should they wish to pass it on to relatives.

My mind was on fire with stories I could write about a quiet revolution happening on farms with dreamers regenerating the soil. The outcome? A novel! The Last Farm on Lovers Lane is complete and I am now looking for a publisher. Below is an excerpt, protected by copyright law. Read it here.

CHAPTER 1

Belle Patterson

I parked the truck in the shade of a sprawling sugar maple. The redolence of warm soil and spice of wild grasses filled the cab as I rolled down the window. On this day I would continue an experiment on a worn out field on my grandfather’s property. Two centuries of extractive farming had depleted our farmland of its natural soil diversity. Teaming up with my friend Janelle, we were conducting a 2-year capstone project to restore the soil.

Stowing the instruments of my trade in a tool belt – spade, sample bags, soil test kit, thermometer, syringe, and Draeger tube – I headed for the field with anticipation. Kneeling in the spongy soil near the first metal cylinder, I inserted a needle into the aperture on the lid to draw a sample of air and pump it into a Draeger tube to measure the gas concentrations, recording them in a field notebook. Knowing the relative amounts of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and oxygen, we could determine the health of the soil’s ecosystem. Next, I drove my spade into the dark loam for a sample. An earthworm oozed out.

“There you are earth-queen,” I whispered to the soil denizen. A drop of my sweat splashed onto its glistening skin causing the worm to contract and plunge out of sight. Small insects worried their bodies through the soil while a sow bug rumbled along my glove like an invertebrate Humvee. Under a hand lens, springtails were busy at life and ants went about their well-ordered societies. The soil community was reawakening.

Hours passed happily as I continued this process at each of the cylinders placed at intervals across the field. A flock of sparrows in the old maple chattered amicably. Engrossed in the process, I jumped when my flip phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Pops.

Out of the Ashes, into the Sun

Beginning about the middle of 2023, we entered the really steep part of this growth curve that could redefine our future, crossing another invisible line, this one marking the installation of a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels on this planet everyday. ~ Bill McKibben, Here Comes the Sun; Introduction, p. 3.

I want to help promote Bill’s book which was just released, written in 2024 with updated figures about the world’s and the U.S.’s transition to solar and wind power.

UPDATE: 8.28.25

But first, I want to share that Bill expertly and with flare and humor, traces humankind’s history of burning things for power and light. Scanning over our journey as a species, we can see how all that came before from burning wood, coal, oil and gas will be surpassed at warp speed as cheap, clean energy replaces those sources. Solar and wind energy are AVAILABLE TO ANYONE which will not only revolutionize how we live but will shift power because, as Bill points out, solar energy is diffuse – available for anyone anywhere on Earth.

Where people who were once able to hoard and control the availability of energy, that will no longer be true. People everywhere will be freed to experience a healthier and more robust life.

Are we in time to stem the worst of a heating Earth and oceans? Bill brings readers up to date on climate science and clean industry, soberly laying out what we have to do and by when to stop additional heating. The race is on but the current U.S. leadership has declared climate change a hoax. That decision is the real hoax – one that imperials Americans and the world.

The book is full of hope and good sense and a realistic estimation of where we are and what we must do over the next 4 and a half years (by 2030) and 24 years (by 2050). Most of the solar industry development is in China but in spite of all the obstacles in America’s way, its happening here as well.

We are going to buy the cheapest energy, the cheapest cars and transportation, and everyone will have access equally. That is a Revolution in America and across the planet.

VOLTS INTERVIEW WITH BILL MCKIBBEN AND JAMIE HENN

SUN DAY, SEPTEMBER 21, THIRD ACT AND PARTNERS

Here Comes the Sun by Bill McKibben

Where Climate and Politics Meet

If the last year has been about a phase change in our planet’s climate, the next year has to be about a phase change in our planet’s politics. ~ Bill McKibben on Substack, August 22, 2023

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the only candidates who are engaged at the national and state levels to manage climate adaptation and the clean energy transition – both of which lead to reduction of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide that are drivers of heating the atmosphere and thus the oceans.

Joe Biden and his Cabinet of experts formulated the Inflation Reduction Act, a historic commitment to funding business, communities and families to make the transition to a clean energy economy. This is an historic achievement.

Oceans have been a sink for heat in the atmosphere throughout the Earth’s history. The ice sheets at the polar caps also reflect incoming sunlight, another of Earth’s modifying functions. Both of these processes have managed to keep the Earth’s temperature at a temperature that supports life. It had been so for 4.3 million years. Humans have long benefitted from the planet’s incredible renewing forces that have made life so abundant and predictable.

Then came the industrial age and with it the burning of fossil fuels. Hundreds of years of wanton deforestation has also removed another natural carbon dioxide “sink” that once kept the Earth cool. The Earth’s temperature has been rising since the industrialization of farming and later industries that burn coal, gas, and other fuels put too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

We have been made aware of this for a century. (Actually, Alexander Humbolt, in the 1799, warned people that the Earth was heating up from human induced causes.) But, I’ve learned something about humans. We are short term thinkers on the whole. When it shows up at our door, we might act but that is not even a guarantee. The problem with that kind of thinking is that once the heat is in the oceans and the atmosphere, it stays there for centuries.

I watch as so much of our heartland is being destroyed by floods and fires, and hurricanes with massive flooding events. Iconic cities and natural areas are disappearing before our eyes. And with them, our livlihoods and lives.

With the other party denying climate change, heads in the sand, while extolling how brilliant they are, please vote for the team already leading on climate mitigation and solutions for our children and all the children to come.

For two centuries the USA has been the biggest emitter and so we have contributed most to the warming of the atmosphere and oceans. Cry babies, some who hold Congressional offices, cry out that China is the biggest emitter today, ignoring our much longer contributions. We have to become adults!

Its about our generation standing up for future generations. Our Children’s Trust recently put it very succintly.

Vote for Harris and Walz as if your life depends on it, because it does.

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

Wendell Berry

Photo by Susan Feathers. Pensacola Beach on Santa Rosa Island, Florida

Places –

Phoenix, Low Desert – 1999

At midnight the heat radiates from the cement driveway under my feet. I stand in the white moonlight gazing up at twinkling stars. The dark outline of tall trees and roof tops form a stage-drop where city glow breaks the blackness of night.

This is my summer ritual: star-gazing in my pajamas. I wake out of some consciousness that tells my snoozing brain I can open the doors and go out to a cool 90 degrees. I lay in a chaise lounge in the middle of the driveway under a sparkling dome of heaven. The air is gentle, warm, caressing. Like other desert creatures, I have become nocturnal. The moon is my muse.

It’s summertime in Phoenix, Arizona. Temperatures soar over 110 ̊. After June, the buildings and streets absorb the day’s solar energy and then slowly release it through the night. Even though the sun goes down, the built environment radiates like an oven. The hum of air conditioners is a constant auditory feature of modern desert life.

In the old parts of town residents open aqueducts in their yards. Encircled by an earthen berm, the lawns hold the precious ground water releasing it slowly to soak deeply into the sandy soil and keep their urban lawns green. In the 1900’s people moved to the desert for its dry climate and to escape allergy-causing vegetation. However, the mulberry and olive trees they imported with them resulted in Phoenix becoming the asthma capital of the west by 2000. The average low temperature has increased by 10 ̊ in just 40 years—the result of miles and miles of asphalt and concrete which act like a heat sponge.

Native trees have been reduced by introduction of non-natives (exotics) like the Tamarisk tree in areas where the water table once ran close to the ground. For thousands of years these habitats supported the greatest species diversity in the state. Beavers and otters abound in rivers and streams, and fauna like deer and Coati mundi inhabited native forests. Memories of Arizona’s extensive green belts have faded with each new generation. Who will remember what has been lost?

Gazing at the twinkling night sky above me, I imagine the ancient Hohokam people—who laid down the original grid of canals still in use today— how they, too, must have lain outside in the cool of moonlight thousands of years before me. Did they work and cavort at night like the desert’s creatures, and sleep in the cool of their adobe huts, or under a shady ramada of reeds, during the blistering heat of daytime? What happened to their great city and 200,000 inhabitants? Why did they leave this valley and its two rivers, the Salt and the Gila, leaving only their canals behind? Am I part of a Great Reenactment?

I watch the dark outline of a big, brown bat drinking nectar from a tall saguaro’s bloom in my neighbor’s yard. Afar I hear coyotes yipping from a hilltop in a suburban sea. In the wee hours of the warm, dry night, I drift into a deep sleep under a canopy of stars.