Events

America’s farms are key to the preservation of vital ecosystems and a stable climate.

Yet farmers and environmentalists have not always seen eye-to-eye about the best ways to manage agricultural landscapes.

Join Don Stuart as he discusses his new book No Farms, No Food, which traces the development of the American Farmland Trust (AFT) responsible for landmark achievements in farmland preservation and conservation practices.

Moderated by Gina Nichols, Assistant Research Professor, Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems, Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation.

This virtual event is held by Island Press. Purchase No Farms, No Food from the locally-owned Changing Hands Bookstore HERE.

Wednesday, May 18, 2022
12:00 - 1:00 p.m. AZ Time

In-person & livestream Town Hall Seattle event: 

In her new book, Healing Grounds, Liz Carlisle shares the stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are restoring native prairies, nurturing beneficial fungi, and enriching soil health to feed their communities and revitalize cultural ties to the land. One woman learned her tribe’s history to help bring back the buffalo. Another preserved forest that was purchased by her great-great-uncle, who was among the first wave of African Americans to buy land. Others have rejected monoculture to grow corn, beans, and squash the way farmers in Mexico have done for centuries. Through techniques long suppressed by the industrial food system, they steadily stitch ecosystems back together and repair the natural carbon cycle. This is true regenerative agriculture, Carlisle explains – not merely a set of technical tricks for storing CO2 in the ground, but a holistic approach that values diversity in plants and people.

But this kind of regenerative farming doesn’t come easily – our nation’s agricultural history is marked by discrimination and displacement. Restoration, repair, and healing can only come from dismantling the power structures that have blocked many farmers of color from owning land or building wealth. Though the task is immense, it holds great promise and hope: that by coming together to restore farmlands, we can not only heal our planet, we can heal our communities and ourselves.

Liz Carlisle is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming. Born and raised in Montana, she got hooked on agriculture while working as an aide to organic farmer and U.S. Senator Jon Tester, which led to a decade of research and writing collaborations with farmers in her home state. She has written three books about regenerative farming and agroecology: Lentil Underground (2015), Grain by Grain (2019, with co-author Bob Quinn), and most recently, Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming (2022). Prior to her career as a writer and academic, she spent several years touring rural America as a country singer.

Latrice Tatsey (In-niisk-ka-mah-kii) is an ecologist and advocate for tribally-directed bison restoration who remains active in her family’s cattle ranching operation at Blackfeet Nation in northwest Montana. Her research focuses on organic matter and carbon in soil, and specifically, the benefits to soil from the reintroduction of bison (iin-ni) to their traditional grazing landscapes on the Blackfeet Reservation. Latrice is currently completing her master’s degree in Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at Montana State University and she serves as a research fellow with the Piikani Lodge Health Institute and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Hillel Echo-Hawk (she/her; Pawnee and Athabaskan) is an Indigenous chef, caterer, and speaker born and raised in the interior of Alaska around the Athabaskan village of Mentasta –– home to the matriarchal chief and subsistence rights activist, Katie John. Watching John and other Indigenous Peoples’ fight for food sovereignty, as well as seeing her mother strive to make healthy, home-cooked meals for her and her six siblings, gave Hillel a unique perspective on diet and wellness. Echo-Hawk is the owner of Birch Basket, her food and work has been featured in James Beard, Bon Appetit, Eater, Huffpost, National Geographic, PBS, Vogue, The Seattle Times, and many, many more.

Presented by Town Hall Seattle and sponsored by PCC Community Markets.

"Dan Chapman’s new book is a celebration of America’s nineteenth-century Southern wilderness, and a wake-up call for the beloved, yet endangered, region today. Chapman guides us through a long-ago dazzling, buzzing, glittering world of forests, meadows, rivers, and marshes—dangerously diminished today by urban sprawl and heedless development, but not yet completely vanished from the earth." - Melissa Fay Greene, award-winning author of Praying for Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing

A Cappella Books welcomes longtime journalist and writer Dan Chapman to Manuel’s Tavern to celebrate the release of his book, A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir's Journey through an Endangered Land.

This event is free and open to the public, and copies of the book will be available for purchase.