Building Healthy Soils

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Videos & Films

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Kiss the Ground
This ground-breaking non-profit focuses on education and awareness of the benefits of healthy soil to the climate, food systems, and the environment through film, soil health education, stewardship, leadership training, advocacy for policy changes, and the Kiss the Ground Farmland Program that supports farmers and ranchers transitioning to regenerative agricultural practices.

Soil Health Academy
Soil Health Academy provides hands-on training on how to improve soil health using principles of regenerative agriculture, increase profitability, build resiliency into the land, decrease input costs, and restore the health of our land, the climate, and the food that we eat.

Books

Gabe Brown. Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey to Regenerative Agriculture. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018
This book tells the story of Farmer Gabe Brown’s 10-year journey from conventional ranching, yielding low profits, to regenerative ranching, creating both profit and healthy product. Using practices of regenerative agriculture, Farmer Gabe Brown describes how he researched and experimented with no‑till planting, cover crops, and holistic grazing to repair 5,000 acres of degraded grassland into a thriving ranch full of life in the soil throughout the grassland ecosystem. Today, Farmer Gabe Brown is known as one of the pioneers of soil health practices and an instructor for Soil Health Academy.

Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis. Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web. Timber Press; Revised ed. edition (February 24, 2010)
Details the types, functions, and importance of soil microbes. Clearly written and scientifically thorough, this volume offers essential facts on how soil life forms work with each other and with plants and fungi to form the foundation of our biosphere.

Charles Massy. Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture; A New Earth. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017
A revolutionary story of the power of regenerative agriculture to restore our soils, our food supply, our planet, our health, and our communities and the courageous farmers transforming their land. Farmer Massy, an award-winning Australian author, shares the stories of farmers and ranchers, including himself, who have moved beyond the use of destructive industrial farming and ranching practices into a regenerative agricultural system of healing the land and way of life.

David R. Montgomery and Anne Bikle. The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health. W.W. Norton Company, 2015
What we don’t see does affect us. This transformative book brings to life the organisms within the soil—invisible to the human eye but profoundly important to our health and the health of our planet.

Judith D. Schwartz. Cows Save the Planet: And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012
The book highlights the pivotal role that soil health plays in Earth’s ecology and economy. The author outlines the multiple benefits derived from planned holistic grazing, including reduced carbon emissions, healthy soils, and improved water cycles, in contrast to the degradation of agricultural land caused by (over)grazing and (under)grazing and the resulting carbon emissions contributing to climate change.