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June 9, 2020, Washington, DC—Green America’s Center for Sustainability Solutions is proud to announce and welcome Courtney Pineau as Senior Director of Climate & Agriculture Networks.

Pineau will lead the Center's Climate and Agriculture programs including the Regenerative Supply Working Group, the Carbon Farming Innovation Network, and the Soil Carbon Index (SCI)—an outcomes-based, verifiable standard to improve soil health and build soil carbon. These networks, comprised of stakeholders across the supply chain, seek to collaboratively reverse the climate crisis by restoring soil health and eco-system biodiversity, and rebuild farm, farm worker, and rural community economic sustainability.

Courtney joins the team from the Non-GMO Project, located in Bellingham, WA, where she served as the Associate Director for seven years. In this capacity, she helped lead the growth of the organization from infancy to its current position as one of the leading food certifications in North America. Pineau’s career has focused on supporting mission-driven organizations in scaling their impact through story, outreach, and strategic partnerships.

“It is a great honor to join Green America in their critical work of bringing stakeholders together to find solutions that rapidly scale regenerative agriculture—one of our most powerful tools in reversing climate change and ensuring the resilience of our food system.” 

Courtney holds an BA degree from Western Washington University and an MBA in Sustainable Business from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (now Presidio Graduate School).

"The work of the Center's Climate and Agriculture Programs is a source of profound hope for reversing the climate arrow, protecting vulnerable people and our magnificent planet," said Alisa Gravitz, Green America's CEO.  "We are thrilled that Courtney has joined our team to lead this work so crucial for the future of the human family."

About Green America: Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America provides the economic strategies, organizing power, and practical tools for consumers, businesses and investors to solve today’s social and environmental problems. Green America’s Center for Sustainability Solutions brings together diverse groups of stakeholders to solve the complex sustainability problems that no individual business, organization, or leader can solve alone www.greenamerica.org  www.centerforsustainabilitysolutions.org  

While many of us are fortunate enough to be able to shelter-in-place during these times, essential workers throughout our food supply chains, from farm workers to delivery drivers, are risking their health to ensure food makes it to our tables. There are an estimated 2.5 million farmworkers in America, many of which are migrant workers. This number doesn’t even include all those individuals in processing, retail, or delivery.

Unfortunately, in many cases, workers in our food supply chain may not have paid sick leave, health insurance, or are not being paid fairly for their work, so on top of risking their health to help keep our country running, many of these workers do not have the necessary safety nets and are at great risk from COVID-19.

COVID-19 has impacted all of us and shined a spotlight on injustices throughout our society. Along with these trying times comes the opportunity to reshape a new normal --one where all people are supported; those that are essential are always treated as essential; and creating a society that works for all people and the planet.

Across the world, governments and multinationals are struggling to come up with and agree on solutions, but this new context provides the opportunity for people to come together and support one another unlike we have in the past.

In that spirit, we have compiled a list of actions that you can take (and share!) to support local worker initiatives within the food supply chain and to source or grow food in a way that’s good for workers and the environment. We recognize that this list is far from exhaustive, so if there is a local group in your community that is doing great work to support workers and the planet in our food supply chains, please share them with us!

To support ALL essential workers, call on Congress to pass an Essential Workers Bill of Rights!

Essential workers on the farm

Agriculture workers abroad 

In April, the International Labor Rights Forum, Fair World Project, and the International Union of Food Workers (IUF) Latin America Regional Secretariat released a report documenting long term human and labor rights abuses on melon plantations in Honduras, specifically focused on Fyffes, one of the largest fruit companies in the world and the largest supplier of melons in the US. They found long-term toxic chemical exposure, which can cause lasting health impacts and make workers more vulnerable to COVID-19.

Send an email to Fyffes demanding they treat melon workers with the respect they deserve: Take action here.

Agriculture workers in the US 

The US government estimates that about half of farmworkers in the US are undocumented, so many do not have health insurance or sick leave. Regardless of legal status, our system relies on these workers and takes advantage by not providing the necessary benefits.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a worker-led human rights organization, is calling on the governor of Florida to protect farmworkers in Immokalee. Support farm workers and call the Florida governor!

Buy directly from the farm 

Many farmers and farmworkers are feeling the impacts of COVID-19, as supply chains to restaurants, universities, and other large purchasers dry up. Some have been able to pivot, selling directly to consumers facing shortages at the grocery store, experiencing health concerns around shopping at large retailers, and looking for ways to support more resilient local food systems. When you purchase directly from farms and eliminate the middleman, more of what you pay goes to farmers, their employees, and their environmental/agricultural values. Purchasing from smaller, local, family farms is a remedy to the corporate consolidation that happens at many levels of the food system.

Check to see if your local farmers market and CSA options have gone virtual. Find and contact your local family farms to see how they’re selling their food.

Essential workers in food and meat processing 

Meat processing factories

Tyson Foods, JBS, and Smithfield, the largest meat producers in the US, “failed to provide protective gear to all works, and some employees say there were told to continue working in crowded plants even while sick”. At the end of April, at least 20 meat processing workers have died.

Venceremos is a newly formed, worker-based organization in Arkansas whose mission is to ensure the human rights of poultry workers. Venceremos is calling on Tyson Foods to protect its workers and provide paid sick leave. Join Venceremos and sign the petition here!

Local and regenerative 

The grave concerns about the health and safety of food workers in meat factories are largely attributed to the huge quantities of meat and rate at which they’re processing. Instead of buying factory farmed and processed meat, consider looking to smaller, local ranchers and processors for meat, dairy, and eggs that come from animals raised in a humane way that’s good for people and the planet. When animals live outside and are processed on a smaller scale, worker safety concerns and localized pollution become less of an issue. Regeneratively managed flocks and herds are also part of the climate solution.

Check out these Certified Green Businesses that are currently delivering food options:

• KOL Foods: Glatt kosher 100% grass-fed beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, and duck. Wild Alaskan salmon.
• Frontier Co-op: a full line of culinary herbs, spices, teas, health foods, baking flavors under Frontier Co-op and Simply Organic brands. Personal care and aromatherapy products are also available in the Aura Cacia brand.
• Amafruits: superfruits from the Amazon in purees, freshly frozen smoothie packs and sorbets
• Thrive Market: Looking for gluten-free snacks, hypoallergenic cleaning products or organic baby food, there's something for every dietary need and lifestyle online at Thrive Market.
• Higher Grounds Coffee: 100% Fair Trade and organic. Specializes in small-batch roasting of sustainably grown coffees from all over the world.
• Grounds for Change: Roasting exclusively Fair Trade, organic, shade-grown coffee for wholesale, retail, and fundraising. Also offering a wide selection of coffee gifts and a coffee-of-the-month club.
• Equal Exchange: Since 1986 Equal Exchange has been America's pioneer brand for Fair Trade organic coffee, tea, and hot cocoa.

Find local meat, eggs, and dairy here.

Looking for delivery? Explore over 400 entries for good food deliveries from pantry items to meats here.

Buy regenerative meats here.

Essential workers in grocery stores and retailers

Across the retail sector, many chains struggled to respond appropriately to COVID-19, at times resulting in workers not being provided the needed protections. While a few chains did initially increase pay due to the increased risks that workers were being exposed to, large chains, like Kroger and Whole Foods, are now looking to reduce pay back to what it was prior to COVID-19.

It is completely unacceptable for these profitable corporations to end these benefits while workers continue to take health risks!

Amazon/Whole Foods 

On June 1st, Amazon and Whole Foods will end both hazard pay and double overtime – right in the middle of a global pandemic. Workers at Amazon facilities and Whole Foods stores across the country have contracted COVID-19. In early May, the first known Amazon worker died from COVID-19. Amazon and Whole Foods are owned by the wealthiest man in the world, and stocks prices are up during the pandemics. Amazon’s treatment of workers is completely unacceptable and put the entire populations health at risk. Tell Jeff Bezos to respect workers and the planet today!  

Local food hubs

Supporting local food systems is more important than ever in the face of this pandemic. If you don’t like how your grocery store is treating its workers or are fed up with empty shelves, look to decentralized and local food systems. While farms and ranches might only be able to focus on producing a few foods, local food hubs gather the many possibilities and make them accessible to you in one place. Many are offering deliveries or special pick up options right now.

Find your local food hub here. Or, consider joining a local coop or CSA program.

Delivery

For many delivery drivers, like those that work for Instacart or Uber, they do not have access to benefits like paid sick leave because of their classification. Gig Workers Rising is a campaign supporting and educating app and platform workers who are organizing for better wages, working conditions, and respect. In the COVID-19 context, individuals, like those driving for Instacart, are often the final step in getting your food, but they do not have proper safety protections from their employer due to misclassification.

Additionally, delivery apps often take a percentage of the profits from the restaurant, leaving already struggling restaurants with even less. If you are able, try to prioritize picking up your food instead to ensure that restaurants get 100% their profits.

Check out their resources to better understand issues facing gig workers and to get involved whether you are a rider or a driver!

Mutual aid funds 

If you are looking for other ways to support those in need, mutual aid funds are a great option. Check out this extensive list of mutual aid funds across the country. You may even be able to find one that is supporting your own community!

What you can do in your home

With so much uncertainty around the stability of supply chains and the safety of workers, many are turning to gardening at home. Growing your own food means you know exactly where and how your food was grown, which is more than can be said about a lot of the food we find at the store. Gardening is a great lockdown activity, can contribute to your own food security, and can relieve some of the pressure on our ailing food system. You can garden in a way that grows good food and is a boon for the environment. During WWII millions of Americans grew 40% of US produce at home.  We can do that again!

Learn how to grow a Climate Victory Garden.

Buying fair trade 

Many grocery chains now carry fair trade options, so in addition to taking action, you can use your purchasing power to increase the demand for fair trade products. Take a look at this resource to learn more about what you are supporting when you by fair trade. By increasing the demand for fair trade products, your purchases will help to reshape our economy to one that treats all workers fairly!

Even though it seems like we have many choices, most of the seeds in this country are owned by a handful of huge seed companies. These seeds are grown thousands of miles away from where they’re finally purchased. We don’t know the details of how they’re grown or their impact on the place they’re grown. It’s likely the seeds aren’t adapted to the area they’re ultimately planted, and the diversity of available varieties is low.

Seed saving is the solution, both to the seed industry’s impact on the climate (production and transportation, for example) and to our gardens’ ability to adapt to climate change.

When we save seeds, we've allowed plants to fully mature beyond the eating stage, into their reproductive stage when they set their seeds. Seeds are then selected from plants that have desired traits such as drought and disease resistance, flavor, size, or abundance. It only takes one generation for seeds to be imbedded with this ecological and cultural knowledge. As climate change creates unpredictable weather, our gardens and farms become more vulnerable. The health of our gardens depends on saved seeds that have generations of coding specific to our local and changing weather patterns.

Saving seeds is a powerful act, but it’s also simple to get started. Think of it as the final stage in a season of gardening, when we allow plants to grow to their mature stage and let seeds form. The following are easy, beginner-level vegetables for you to bring seed saving to your own Climate Victory Garden:

Lettuce

• Select a variety that prefers local precipitation levels, maintains good leaf growth, doesn't go to seed early, and has a desirable flavor.
• Pull out all the plants with undesirable traits.
• Allow the remaining plants to mature, and you'll notice that the leaves start to head up (get more elongated, pointed, and more vertical growth).
• Flowers will begin to form at the top of the stem. When a majority of the flowers are dry, pull the plant out of the ground and cut off the upper stem with the flowers. 
• Store this top of the stem in a cool dry place until you have the time to sort and clean the seeds. 
• Strip the flowers off the stems and crumble them. Then winnow (separate) the chaff from the seed.
• Store in glass, paper bags, or envelopes.

Tomatoes

• Select for flavor, size, color, water needs, and strength of the plant.
• Pick a tomato that is fully ripe. Cut in half and squeeze the juice and seeds into a small glass jar or cup. Make sure it's a juicy liquid. If it's a tomato that’s inherently not juicy, then add a small amount of water so that the seeds are suspended. 
• Allow this to sit at room temperature three to four days. A mold will likely form on the top.
• The viable seeds will sink to the bottom, and the protective gel around the seed will break down in this fermentation process.
• Skim off the mold first, then pour the rest into a strainer and run the seeds under water until they are clean. 
• Put the clean seeds on a dish to fully dry, then store in a glass jar, paper bag or envelope.

Always store your seeds in a cool, dark, dry space. Label with the name of the plant, date, location, and growing conditions. Consider adding any other pertinent information regarding the growing season that may be helpful to the future. And, if you have a special story that goes with those specific seeds you might want to include that as well.

Ready to take the next step in seed saving? Check out this Seed Saving Guide from the Organic Seed Alliance.

Written by Wendy Weiner, a gardener by trade, graduate of Seed School, and one of the founding members of the Salida Seed Library in Salida, Colorado. 

Don’t let a lack of space or an urban setting stop you from participating in the carbon capture movement. An excellent way to get your hands dirty is to sign up for a community garden. Or offer to help in someone else’s garden.

If neither is an option, you can grow food in containers using regenerative techniques like composting, mulching, and minimal soil disturbance. Containers can be placed on porches, patios, balconies, window boxes, and even indoors. Here are a few tips to get you going.

Find a big container

Bigger is better when it comes to pots. Especially if you're growing perennials, small pots make it hard to take advantage of these plants’ robust root structures. Root-bound or crowded plants won’t weather outdoor temperature swings well and typically need more tending. A good rule of thumb is to choose a container that offers as much space below ground as a mature plant’s foliage above ground (and, 6 inches deep at a minimum).

Choose your plants wisely

Many vegetables have varieties that are better suited to grow in containers, like dwarf and bush varieties. Check the back of your seed packets or ask an expert at your local garden store if you're unsure. If you grow annual plants like lettuce or tomato, you'll replant each season. Perennial plants like herbs will live for years in a container. If you're growing a perennial that won't withstand the cold, consider how you might bring the container indoors in the winter.

Keep plants well drained

The biggest reason potted plants don’t fare well over time is soggy soil. Some containers come with drainage holes, but many do not. Buy the ones that do (or create them yourself!). If your pot is over six inches wide, it needs more than one hole. If you're repurposing something like an old 5 gallon bucket, drill or cut drainage holes in the bottom (large enough for water to easily escape, but small enough to not lose precious soil).

Use potting soil

Garden soil often becomes compacted over time, and potted plants are almost impossible to aerate without damaging the roots. If you're growing food in contains, make your own potting soil mix by combining equal parts of coconut fiber, good garden soil, compost, and sand. The coconut fiber and sand prevent soil from compacting and increase drainage.

You can also buy potting soil from your local garden store. Potting soil is usually mixed with perlite or vermiculite, textured styrofoam-like pebbles, to help container soil stay loose and porous. Look for potting soil that is 100 percent organic and, if you can find it, inoculated with mycorrhizae, a fungus that works with plant roots to absorb more nutrients. Avoid soil mixes with peat due to their environmental impact.  

Maintain regeneratively

While potted plants are resilient, they do take a little extra care. Garden plants have deep root structures that can find water and nutrients underground, but if you're growing food in containers, it's up to you to keep them moist and fed.

• Watering: The exposed sides of the pot absorb heat and dry out the potting soil quickly. Water your soil whenever it’s dry. 
• Composting: Twice a year in the spring and fall, add valuable nutrients by layering on a half-inch of compost. Gently mix it into the top two inches of soil.
• Mulching potted plants: If you're growing food in containers outside during the summer, cover the top of the soil with mulch to keep it from baking in the sun. Mulch also helps retain moisture, whether your plants live inside or out.

Troubleshoot

If your potted plant has stopped growing or the roots have pushed through the drainage holes, it’s time to repot. Find a new container big enough for your plant to stretch out and grow. Fill in the extra space with an equal mixture of potting soil and compost.

Yellowing leaves may mean a plant needs more nitrogen. Liquid fish emulsion can quickly boost plant growth. It’s simple to add, since you don’t need to mix it into the soil. Dilute the concentrate with water, following the instructions on the label, and slowly pour the mixture into the pot. Be aware that fish emulsion smells pretty, well, fishy, which can be a problem for indoor plants. Cut down on the stink by adding a few drops of lavender oil before pouring.

Written by Acadia Tucker, a regenerative farmer, climate activist, and author.

Most of us don’t know the entire history of our homes and the land they’re built on. And, renters likely know even less. In some cases, your yard may have had uses in the past that make it unfit for growing food altogether. Your home may have been painted with lead paint that flaked off. Or, there could have been potentially polluting industry near your home and garden. 

If you have any question, it’s best to test. 

Soil testing can give you information about possible contaminants and toxins. It's great for learning what nutrients and supplements your soil might need to produce a healthy and successful garden too. Climate Victory Gardeners can request additional soil carbon testing alongside the basic kit to measure their climate impact after they've adopted carbon-capturing practices.

You can often find soil testing kits at local agricultural extension office associated with a state university, even if that university is hundreds of miles away. You can also contact the university or lab directly to have a soil testing kit mailed to you (find the contact info for your nearest office here). While you may be able to find kits online or at local garden and hardware stores, we suggest going through a local university to ensure the tests are conducted in professional labs. 

The kit consists of a simple plastic tube or bag and instructions on how to collect the soil.

Early spring is a great time of year to test your soil. It’s best to do it when the ground is thawed and digging up the samples won’t disturb growing plants. But really, you can do this just about any day of the year.

Learn more about the details of what you can expect from testing your soil—including tracking soil carbon for your Climate Victory Garden. 

Stopping climate change is hard enough, but racism only makes it harder.

By Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, June 3, 2020

Here is an incomplete list of things I left unfinished last week because America’s boiling racism and militarization are deadly for black people: a policy memo to members of Congress on accelerating offshore wind energy development in U.S. waters; the introduction to my book on climate solutions; a presentation for a powerful corporation on how technology can advance ocean-climate solutions; a grant proposal to fund a network of women climate leaders; a fact check of a big-budget film script about ocean-climate themes, planting vegetables with my mother in our climate victory garden.

Toni Morrison said it best, in a 1975 speech: “The very serious function of racism … is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.” As a marine biologist and policy nerd, building community around climate solutions is my life’s work. But I’m also a black person in the United States of America. I work on one existential crisis, but these days I can’t concentrate because of another.

The sheer magnitude of transforming our energy, transportation, buildings and food systems within a decade, while striving to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions shortly thereafter, is already overwhelming. And black Americans are disproportionately more likely than whites to be concerned about — and affected by — the climate crisis. But the many manifestations of structural racism, mass incarceration and state violence mean environmental issues are only a few lines on a long tally of threats. How can we expect black Americans to focus on climate when we are so at risk on our streets, in our communities, and even within our own homes? How can people of color effectively lead their communities on climate solutions when faced with pervasive and life-shortening racism?

Even at its most benign, racism is incredibly time consuming. Black people don’t want to be protesting for our basic rights to live and breathe. We don’t want to constantly justify our existence. Racism, injustice and police brutality are awful on their own, but are additionally pernicious because of the brain power and creative hours they steal from us. I think of one black friend of mine who wanted to be an astronomer, but gave up that dream because organizing for social justice was more pressing. Consider the discoveries not made, the books not written, the ecosystems not protected, the art not created, the gardens not tended.

It’s hearing police sirens and helicopters in my Brooklyn neighborhood and knowing those who sound them do not always aim to protect and serve. It’s walking the back roads near my mom’s home Upstate New York and being more scared of the local white kids in the pickup truck with the Confederate flag on the bumper — in a state that was never part of the Confederacy — than I am of the local black bears. It’s spending my weekend writing these words.

Here’s the rub: If we want to successfully address climate change, we need people of color. Not just because pursuing diversity is a good thing to do, and not even because diversity leads to better decision-making and more effective strategies, but because, black people are significantly more concerned about climate change than white people (57 percent vs. 49 percent), and Latinx people are even more concerned (70 percent). To put that in perspective, it means that more than 23 million black Americans already care deeply about the environment and could make a huge contribution to the massive amount of climate work that needs doing.

I did get tiny tasks done last week — emails, (virtual) meetings. Because we are taught the show must go on, I mustered the composure to conduct an interview about the importance of planting trees. But none of the deeper work got done, none of the work that could be a significant contribution to how we think about climate solutions and how fast we implement them. Instead of working, I was checking in on my people, staying informed, doom-scrolling.

Now I’m totally spent. Not from the day, but from the week, the month, the year, this presidential administration, this country that keeps breaking my heart. We are resilient, but we are not robots.

People of color disproportionately bear climate impacts, from storms to heat waves to pollution. Fossil-fueled power plants and refineries are disproportionately located in black neighborhoods, leading to poor air quality and putting people at higher risk for coronavirus. Such issues are finally being covered in the news media more fully.

But this other intersection of race and climate doesn’t get talked about nearly enough: Black Americans who are already committed to working on climate solutions still have to live in America, brutalized by institutions of the state, constantly pummeled with images, words and actions showing just us how many of our fellow citizens do not, in fact, believe that black lives matter. Climate work is hard and heartbreaking as it is. Many people don’t feel the urgency, or balk at the initial cost of transitioning our energy infrastructure, without considering the cost of inaction. Many fail to grasp how dependent humanity is on intact ecosystems. When you throw racism and bigotry in the mix, it becomes something near impossible.

Look, I would love to ignore racism and focus all my attention on climate. But I can’t. Because I am human. And I’m black. And ignoring racism won’t make it go away.

So, to white people who care about maintaining a habitable planet, I need you to become actively anti-racist. I need you to understand that our racial inequality crisis is intertwined with our climate crisis. If we don’t work on both, we will succeed at neither. I need you to step up. Please. Because I am exhausted.

Pollinators are important allies in your Climate Victory Garden. These bees, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, and wasps (and even birds and bats) pollinate between three quarters and 95 percent of all flowering plants on earth, including many of the crops and plants in your garden.

One in three bites of our food wouldn’t exist without pollinators, but these important players in our ecosystem are at risk due to habitat destruction, climate change, and the misuse of chemicals.

The best thing you can do to support pollinators is to reduce or eliminate use of synthetic chemicals in your garden, especially pesticides that are meant to kill pests but also inadvertently kill the beneficial pollinators. Be wary of chemicals that are advertised as non-toxic or low toxicity—for example, some formulations of permethrin are considered non-toxic to humans but are extremely harmful to bees. Fewer chemicals means fewer risks for pollinators (and you!) and contributes to the climate solution.

Creating habitat is also an important way to support pollinators.

Eliminate your use of non-organic pesticides.

Many pests can be easily controlled in a well-balanced garden. Using integrated pest management techniques like rotating crops, planting locally adapted pest resistant varieties, encouraging the natural predators of pests, and physically excluding and removing pests.

That said, if you find yourself needing to use chemical control, opt for organic options that protect your local ecosystem and pollinators, many of which are derived from plants or naturally-occurring bacteria. Be on the lookout for products that are greenwashed, and actually contain toxic ingredients—review the ingredients before using. Or, consider DIY remedies that are often comprised of nontoxic home ingredients, like soap, beer, garlic, and pepper.

Various pesticides work in different ways, so be sure to read the instructions carefully. If possible, apply in the evenings, when most pollinators are least active. Avoid spraying pollinators directly with whatever product you’re using, and cover plants after spraying for the duration of time that pollinators could potentially be harmed. Consider avoiding any pesticide use on all plants while they’re flowering.

Include pollinator habitat in your garden plan.

Select plants that support pollinators. In some cases, these are plants you’d like to eat yourself like tomatoes or sunflowers. In other cases, they’re specific to the pollinators like milkweed for Monarch butterflies that add beauty and diversity to your garden.

Pollinator Partnership has a great tool where you enter your zip code and learn more about the specific plants that will grow in your area and what types of pollinators they will attract. For example, bees prefer bright white, yellow, or blue flowers with a mild odor and shallow shape. Butterflies, on the other hand, prefer bright reds and purples and flowers with a wide landing pad. Choose native and perennial options for greater climate impact, and plant strategically so there’s always something blooming.

Build a Monarch butterfly habitat. Plant a tree, where 30 percent of bees live and where most honeybees get their nectar. Buy honey from local beekeepers who care about pollinators and the environment. Build a hotel for mason bees (which are docile and don’t require much care).

You can also take action beyond your backyard. You can plant pollinator parkways in the spaces between your sidewalks and curbs. And, if your city is not yet a Bee City, you can encourage your city council to take part and get all residents on board with protecting pollinators.

A rain barrel is a water catchment system that you can easily set up in your yard. All you need to do is find a large plastic barrel, install a screen over the top, and put a faucet at the bottom. Rain will run off your roof and into the barrel (placed strategically under a rain gutter downspout). The screen will catch debris, and you can attach a hose to the faucet and use the water as needed.

The most challenging part of installing your own water barrel will likely be finding the barrel itself. You’ll need a 50-gallon plastic barrel that is strong enough to handle the water pressure (a plastic trash can is typically too thin for the task and will collapse or break once it’s full). You can buy a barrel at most hardware stores, your local garden supply store, or a retailer from GreenPages.org, a directory of our certified Green Business Network members. 

If you want to save resources, find a used barrel (hint: this is also the best option for the planet!). Check with local restaurants, bottling companies, or food manufacturers to see if they have used food-grade barrels. These businesses often receive large shipments of liquids in plastic barrels and have no use for them afterward. These barrels are engineered so the plastic does not break down when it comes into contact with liquid.

Once you have a barrel, these are the tools you’ll need:

• Power drill with hole bit (1/16 inch smaller than faucet insert) and pilot drill bit. (A 3⁄4” faucet measures 1” on outside, so you need a 15/16” hole bit)
• Pliers to tighten washers
• Paper towels (for excess caulk)
• Utility knife or small saber saw to cut lid
• Scissors to cut screening
• Hacksaw to shorten downspout
• Screwdriver for hose clamp

Once you’ve gathered your tools, make a trip to your local hardware store to gather your supplies:

• A 3⁄4” faucet (measures 1” on outside)
• Washers and lock nut for the faucet
• Caulk (clear plumber’s)
• Screening (Buy a roll that is used to repair screen windows. Nylon fabric-like netting is better than the metal type.)
• Hose adapter for your overflow (Many options here, depending on where you want your overflow to go.)
• Washer and lock nut needed for the adapter
• Hosing (short piece) to connect one barrel to another, if you want to have multiple barrels. Hose clamps as needed.
• Bricks or cinder blocks to raise your barrel above the ground (this will improve water pressure).

Now it’s time to put together your barrel. Follow these steps, provided by Clean Virginia Waterways. If you need some extra help, they have photos to accompany each step on their website:

• Drill a hole near bottom of barrel where your faucet will be.
• Caulk around outside of hole.
• Screw faucet in, using a washer.
• Caulk inside, then put on lock nut with washer and tighten with pliers.
• Drill a hole near top for overflow, where water will flow out when your barrel is full.
• Put in a hose adapter for overflow with washers and tighten with pliers.
• Cut out center of lid.
• Cut screen larger than lid (the screen will be placed on top of the lid and will help keep out debris and mosquitoes).
• Level the dirt under the rain barrel, then add some sand.
• Rain barrels need to be higher than ground level—use bricks or cinder blocks to give your barrel some height.
• Measure and cut off part of the downspout.
• Put the barrel in place, securing the screen over it with the lid, and placing it under the downspout.
• Connect the overflow from one barrel to the next, or have overflow hose divert excess rain to a garden or distant area of your choice, away from your home’s foundation.

If you have cold winters, store your rain barrel in the winter. Turn it on its side so it doesn’t collect water that will freeze and crack the barrel. Taking good care of your rain barrel will keep it in good condition for years to come.

It's good for the environment. 

Rain barrels help you conserve water in your Climate Victory Garden. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that lawn and garden watering make up about 40 percent of household water use in summer months, and that a rain barrel will save most homeowners 1,300 gallons of water during that time.

In addition to conserving water, collecting runoff from your roof stops that water from polluting your local watershed. Typically, rainwater will run off of your roof and end up either in a local sewage system or stream. On the journey, the water can pick up pollutants like yard fertilizers, oil and gasoline from street surfaces, animal waste, and more. This polluted storm water runoff will either tax a municipal sewage system or pollute your local watershed. Treatment facilities can easily become overwhelmed and often use energy that has a climate impact.

Learn more about the benefits of using rain barrels in your Climate Victory Garden. 

Check local ordinances

Check with your local officials to ensure that chickens are allowed where you live. Some municipalities have bans on chickens, or limits on how many chickens you can keep on your property. Because of their infamous early-morning cockadoodle-doos, roosters are banned from many cities. If your city isn’t yet chicken-friendly, CommunityChickens.com has articles on how to change local ordinances if you have one in your area.

Build a happy chicken home

You’ll need a chicken coop or a secure hen house that offers the birds a safe place to lay eggs, as well as a “run” where they can roam and peck. Make sure your coop is predator-proof.

Each chicken needs three to four square feet of space in the coop, and another three to four square feet in the run. Because chickens are social animals, we suggest a minimum of six chickens—which would require an 18-sq foot coop and a run of equal size. Experts also recommend having one nesting box inside the coop for every three to four chickens—you can use a pre-fabricated wooden box from a feed store, or utilize any number of things you may have at home, like old milk crates, plastic tubs, dresser drawers, and even a five-gallon bucket placed on its side. 

If you’re a do-it-yourself-er, the internet is rife with ideas and instructions—from coops on wheels that can be moved from place-to-place in your yard to designs to build a coop for under $100. Choose non-toxic and sustainable materials to have the lightest impact on the earth and its climate.

Your local feed store and online companies like backyardchickens.com or The Front Yard Coop also carry ready-built chicken coops.

Pick your chicks

There are many breeds available for your flock. Different breeds have different personalities and different rates of egg-laying—and you can combine breeds in one flock for variety. Mother Earth News has a “Pickin’ Chicken” app to help you choose, or use MyPetChicken.com’s Breed Selector Tool to find the breed of chicken right for you.

If you want to raise your chickens from chicks, you’ll need heat and special feed; chicks can be found at local feed stores and farms. You may also be able to find older chickens locally. Consider looking at local shelters and farm sanctuaries first.

Care for them daily

Taking proper care of your chickens will ensure that they stay healthy and will help you get the most eggs out of your flock. Each chicken requires about ¼ cup of feed per day, as well as a supply of fresh, clean water. Chickens can survive both hot and cold weather and will be fine outside with temperatures as low as 15 degrees, but their laying patterns will change with the seasons.

Be sure to be vigilant about cleaning your chicken coop every two weeks and cleaning your hands and shoes after handling chickens and their eggs. The old bedding material and manure collected from the coop and run make excellent organic fertilizer to add to compost and garden beds (once aged).

Keeping chickens is one of the optional Climate Victory Gardening practices because of the animals' climate-savvy fertilization techniques (manure) and their ability of divert organic wastes from the landfill where it would otherwise generate potent greenhouse gases.

Most hens start laying eggs at about six months old and will lay with the greatest frequency for that first year—around four to seven eggs each week, though it may vary with the seasons. The number of eggs she’ll produce will reduce by about ten percent each subsequent year, and most backyard hens can live from eight to ten years.

Learn more about The Many Benefits of Backyard Chickens. 

When choosing the right mulching material, consider what’s affordable, available, and appropriate for the task at hand. Are you mulching for weeds, warmth, aesthetic value, or water retention? Different mulches have different jobs throughout the garden.

Most mulches help your garden become a Climate Victory Garden because they protect life in the soil, encouraging the carbon capture that makes gardening part of the climate solution.

We encourage using organic mulches that persistently work to improve the health of the soil, that is, materials that are broken down by soil microbes to increase organic matter. Consider avoiding synthetic mulches like landscape fabric, because they do nothing for soil health and create more waste for the landfill.

Straw or hay 

• Benefits: Best used to insulate perennials during the winter months.  
• Drawbacks: Cheap hay is filled with weed seeds that can take over your garden.
• Bottom line: Buy the same quality of hay or straw that is used for feed and weeds shouldn’t be a problem.

Grass

• Benefits: Great for adding nutrients, particularly phosphorus, to the soil.
• Drawbacks: It can get “hot” enough to kill your plants when left in clumps more than one inch thick.
• Bottom line: Use thin layers of grass to add nutrients and avoid suffocating your plants.

Coco fiber

• Benefits: Lightweight and easy to handle. It's also a great source of phosphorus.
• Drawbacks: Expensive and the high nutrient content makes it toxic to pets.
• Bottom line: Use it in the greenhouse for seedlings. The expense and potential hazard outweigh its benefit in the garden.

Leaves

• Benefits: You can find nearly an endless supply in the fall. Ask your friends to save them too!
• Drawbacks: Whole, dry leaves can mat together and prevent water from reaching the soil.
• Bottom line: Leaves make amazing mulch if they are shredded by a mower or left to dry out and crumbled.

Gravel or pebbles 

• Benefits: Perfect for plants that need drainage. Rocks also absorb heat during the day and release it during the night, which protects cold-sensitive plants.
• Drawbacks: Pebbles can be messy and make it hard to dig.
• Bottom line: Save the pebbles for your succulent garden or planters.

Wood chips or bark

• Benefits: Easy to get from your local utility company. They also slowly decompose so you won't have to replace as often.
• Drawbacks: High carbon content can steal nutrients from the soil surface. Mulches like wood chips, straw, and sawdust are high in carbon and low in nitrogen. When soil microbes eat the mulch, they pull all of the available nitrogen from the soil surface in order to break down the woody materials. This creates a localized nutrient deficiency around plant roots. Offset this by mixing in a high nitrogen fertilizer, such as blood meal or fish meal, when applying woody mulches.
• Bottom line: Save the bark for pathways and areas that see a lot of foot traffic.

Newspaper or cardboard

• Benefits: Abundant in today’s age of Amazon packages arriving almost daily. A great alternative to weed fabric.
• Drawbacks: Some inks and glues contain toxic chemicals.
• Bottom line: Most inks are soy based so they are safe for the garden. Avoid using glossy paper or boxes coated in colored inks.

Sawdust

• Benefits: Very inexpensive because it is a waste product.
• Drawbacks: Very acidic and messy.
• Bottom line: Only use sawdust around your acid-loving perennials, like blueberries.

Excerpt from article originally published on Stone Pier Press, written by Acadia Tucker, a regenerative farmer, climate activist, and author.

“Right now, Minneapolis and cities across our country are on fire, and our people are hurting—the violence against Black bodies felt in the ongoing mass disobedience, all while we grapple with a pandemic that is disproportionately affecting, infecting, and killing us.” —Black Lives Matter

Green America condemns the killing of George Floyd who is one of so many Black people killed by the police. Recent, terrible events—the pervasiveness of brutality and killing by police of Black and Brown Americans, and the disproportionate suffering and death by COVID-19 in communities of color—are manifestations of hundreds of years of white-privilege policy-making and decision-making at every level of society.

To create a world where all people are valued equally, we need systemic change. The police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others as well as the COVID-19 pandemic’s unjust toll on people of color require that our society forges a better way forward.

Our statement on the COVID-19 crisis and call for action recognizes that the long-term well-being of our nation depends on the well-being of all of us. We need to transform our systems because these recent examples of injustice are not anomalies, they are the norm for many people.

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, protests have broken out nationwide. The government at all levels has focused on violently suppressing, and escalating, protests in American cities without addressing the systemic racism that is the cause of the protests. As Martin Luther King Jr. made clear, we cannot have true justice as long as we value “a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

This is a time to listen, learn from, and follow Black leaders and organizations like those listed below; to raise our voices to demand justice and condemn injustice; and to amplify the voices of those so often ignored. White people can and must use their privileges to radically change and end the systems that continue to oppress people of color.

Take Action Now for George Floyd and Black Communities:

1. Join community events (physically distancing) and social change organizations. Activist groups, civic associations, houses of worship, and others are increasingly mobilizing for safe communities and against police killings. Examples include Black Lives Matter, Color of Change, Anti Police-Terror Project, Campaign Zero, The Bail Project, Communities Against Police Brutality, Know Your Rights Camp, Black Visions Collective Public activism at the local level is essential to getting police forces to address systemic racism.
2. Join events (physically distancing) and organizations focused on the health disparities and other inequalities faced by communities of color on a regular basis and especially during COVID-19, such as Black Lives Matter; Poor People’s Campaign; Movement for Black Lives, Free Them All for Public Health; NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Real Justice PAC; Fair Fight.
3. Donate to the organizations above and to those like them in your community.
4. Vote for leaders dedicated to social, racial, and environmental justice.

Green America will not be passive. We will work in partnership with diverse social justice organizations and leaders to build an economy that helps solve deep social and environmental problems and to oppose the economic practices that hurt vulnerable communities. Green America invites the public to join us as we:

• Call on national leaders and join allies to demand protection of all communities during the pandemic, especially people of color, low income communities, undocumented people, and prison populations;
• Tackle the climate crisis that disproportionately impacts vulnerable communities;
• Use financial tools to fight for economic inclusion, fair pay, community development, workers’ rights, and human rights;
• Support policies that protect workers nationally and international from abuse;
• Promote safe food and agricultural practices that foster human health and a livable world, including protecting the people who harvest our produce, and the slaughterhouse, warehouse and grocery store workers who bear the brunt of racism and exploitation.

Green America’s vision calls for a world where all people have enough, where all communities are healthy and safe, and where the abundance of the Earth is preserved for all the generations to come. For us, “green” always means both social and environmental justice. Green America will continue to work for the day when this vision is a reality for all people.

“It’s up to all of us—Black, white, everyone—no matter how well-meaning we think we might be, to do the honest, uncomfortable work of rooting [racism] out; It starts with self-examination and listening to those whose lives are different from our own. It ends with justice, compassion, and empathy that manifests in our lives and on our streets.” —Michelle Obama

by Louise Boyle, June 2, 2020

Environmental activists are voicing support for protesters who have taken to the streets in outrage over the police killing of George Floyd, while acknowledging the green movement's own need to tackle ongoing racial inequality.

A number of leading green groups have issued statements recognising that systemic racism is deeply intertwined with the climate crisis, and pointing to disparities between the current response to demonstrators and how other movements have been treated.

“It’s not lost on me that last year’s Climate Strikes received overwhelmingly positive coverage, while this weekend we’ve seen more concern over how people protest than the movement’s goals,” said May Boeve, executive director of climate non-profit, 350.org, which has asked supporters to donate to bail-out funds for those arrested at demonstrations.

Mr Floyd, 46, died on 25 May after a police officer, Derek Chauvin, pinned a knee to his neck for almost nine minutes. Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter, and while the three other officers involved have been fired, they are yet to face charges.

For seven days, thousands of people have taken part in largely peaceful protests across at least 140 US cities. Some demonstrations have been marred by pockets of violence and looting. In places, peaceful protesters were seen rushing to form human chains in front of stores to stop the destruction.

President Donald Trump upped the ante by threatening to deploy the military to “dominate the streets” of America and federal forces followed his lead, aggressively clearing a Washington DC park of protesters with tear gas so he could walk to a church and pose with a Bible on Monday evening.

(AFP via Getty Images)

Demonstrators have been met by waves of heavily-armed law enforcement in riot gear who have unleashed rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets. Hundreds of people have been arrested while both protesters and police have been injured in clashes.

Some have pointed to the differences in the police response to those protesting police violence this past week — where demonstrations have included many people of colour — and the approach to recent anti-coronavirus lockdown protests consisting largely of white men, some bearing assault weapons.

Georgetown Law professor, Paul Butler, told Vox: “Unarmed people, many of whom are people of colour, protest police brutality and are met with police brutality — flash grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets. But when armed, mainly white protesters storm the Michigan state capitol, the police just let them be.”

Thanu ​Yakupitiyage, associate director of US Communications for 350.org, said: "The New York Climate Strikes were incredibly diverse but the reality is that often times when there's a lot of white folks involved as well, something is considered legitimate, and when it's black folks who are leading the charge it's not considered legitimate."

She said their organisation was focused on ensuring "that all of our organising around climate has a racial justice lens" and that those involved in the Climate Strikes were standing in solidarity with Black Lives.

Calls have come from across the climate community for activists to support the Movement for Black Lives.

“We recognize that as a predominantly white organization, we have an obligation to be fully and visibly committed to the fight against systemic racism,” Jenny Powers, an Natural Resources Defense Council spokeswoman, told the Washington Post. The non-profit has asked supporters to donate to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and others providing legal and financial aid to protesters.

Ben Wyskida, CEO of social change agency Fenton, sent an email to supporters, conveying "disgust" at Mr Floyd's killing and anger at the divergent responses to protesters.

He wrote: "We are outraged at the contrast between white 'reopen' protesters being treated with deference and Black protesters being tear-gassed. And we are driven to action shaken by the protests and uprisings of the last several days, and the extreme reactions of police departments nationwide."

Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote: "For too long conservation and environmental movements have not spoken up to address the long-standing challenges that non-white communities face. Environmental organizations should work to bring down the barriers that affect Black, people of colour, and Indigenous communities. EDF will provide support and solutions to achieve environmental justice and equity.”

Friends of the Earth echoed the Black Lives movement's call to defund the police and condemned Mr Floyd's murder, along with recent killings of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Ahmaud Arbery, "and the continued state-sanctioned violence against Black people in the United States". Greenpeace also released a statement saying that "the environmental community must not stay silent in the face of systemic injustice."

Minority and poor communities disproportionately bear the brunt of pollution and climate change. Some 68 per cent of black people live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant despite being 13 per cent of the population, according to GreenAmerica.org, compared to 56 per cent of white people, making them more likely to feel the health impacts of pollution including breathing issues and heart conditions. More than a third of Latinos, who make up 17 per cent of the US population, also live within a 30-mile radius.

Indigenous communities in the US and Canada have staged protests and are fighting court battles against oil pipeline construction, which they say is hazardous to the natural resources of their ancestral lands.

The environmental movement has a dark history marred by explicit racist views, with some early conservationists pushing theories of white supremacy, the use of eugenics and sterilisation programmes.

Julian Brave Noisecat, Vice President of Policy & Strategy of Data for Progress, told The Independent in April that "the environmental movement in its history has, for the most part, been a movement led by and for middle-class, white people".

In environmental organisations, people of colour remain vastly underrepresented. Green 2.0, an advocacy group that tracks racial and ethnic diversity in the field, found in a recent study that although there were some positive signs of diversity, there was still a long way to go.

“There is no climate justice without a racial analysis,” said 350.org North America director Tamara Toles O’Laughlin.

"Decades of environmental justice activism has shown that communities facing racist violence and over-policing are also overrun by fossil fuel extraction, pollution, and every manner of related health disparities. The truth is that the status quo is killing us and so we have no reason to support ‘business as usual’.

"Our fight for climate justice must necessarily include challenging the systems of racism that protect profits for the wealthy few and destroys Black Lives. In our demands to invest in climate action and a Green New Deal, we are also calling for divestment from systems of white supremacy in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives.”

The number of black and Latino organisations which focus on environmental justice is growing.

“When we say ‘I can’t breathe’ — whether it is an officer with a knee on our neck or the pollution which continues to take away our breath — that’s why we march and that’s why we work so hard to change these dynamics,” Mustafa Santiago Ali, vice president of environmental justice at the National Wildlife Foundation, told Grist.

Associated Press contributed to this report.

Pest populations can explode even if you keep your soil healthy and maintain a balanced garden ecosystem. Pest management is a natural part of growing plants and occasionally gardeners need to rely on external control measures like pesticides.

Organic gardeners shy away from using pesticides for some very good reasons. Sprays, particularly if they are not organic, can kill beneficial bugs and insects, like the bees that pollinate your raspberries or the insects that cycle nutrients through your soil. Pesticides also find their way into the food chain because plants absorb chemicals through roots and leaves.

Fortunately you can mitigate the risk of using pesticides by relying on ones certified for organic use, which tend to be derived from plants and naturally-occurring bacteria. Use these as a last resort, as they do have an impact on your local biodiversity as well as a climate footprint associated with their production and transportation to your home or local garden store.

Note: Certified organic or not, you want to keep pesticides in their original containers, out of reach of pets and children and in a dark and dry place that never drops below 40 degrees or gets hotter than 100 degrees. Be mindful of supporting pollinators.

Here are some pesticides that are certified for organic use:

Neem Oil

Neem oil is a great preventive control measure. It comes from the bark and leaves of the Neem tree, a common evergreen grown in tropical and subtropical regions. Azadirachtin, the active ingredient in Neem oil, makes insects grow slowly and eat less. It also makes them lose interest in laying eggs so there are fewer of them to begin with. Neem is particularly effective against fast growing beetles, small caterpillars, and aphids. 

Use Neem on plants as soon as you see the first adult bug, and spray weekly. Keep your bees safe by covering treated plants with a row cover. Don’t expect Neem to instantly rid your garden of pests. It works over time by limiting the reproduction and growth of bad bugs. If you want to speed up the process, you can also hand-pluck adult bugs from plants. 

Preparation: Most Neem products come as a concentrate that needs to be mixed with warm water before spraying it onto your plants. Follow the label instructions to know the proportions to use. Apply the mixture weekly to the tops and underside of leaves. Avoid spraying in direct sun, since it will burn oil-covered leaves, much in the way baby oil causes skin to burn.

Storage: Concentrated Neem can be kept for up to two years.

Insecticidal soaps

Insecticidal soaps are an effective way to control soft-bodied insects if no beneficial bugs are around to do the job for you. The fatty acids in insecticidal soaps break down the protective cuticles of soft-bodied pests like aphids and caterpillars, which become dehydrated and die.

Soap sprays only kill insects that are sprayed directly so be sure to thoroughly wet both sides of leaves and avoid spraying beneficial insects, like bees and spiders. Repeat applications every five to seven days, as new pests hatch and form colonies. Keep a premixed spray bottles on hand so you can spray pests as soon as you see them.

Preparation: Make your own soap spray by mixing one tablespoon of dishwashing soap per quart of water. You can also buy an insecticidal soap concentrate. Follow label directions for diluting it because using too much can harm plant leaves. If you have hard water at home, use bottled water to make sprays, because the minerals in hard water reduce the effectiveness of insecticidal soap.

Mix only as much concentrate as you need for the day and keep spray bottles out of the sun, which will degrade the quality of your spray and make it less effective. Any unused sprays that haven't been used in a week can be diluted with more water and poured out in the garden far from any storm drains. 

Storage: Soap concentrates can last for up to five years.

Diatomaceous Earth (DE)

DE is made from the pulverized fossils of tiny sea creatures and looks like broken glass if you peer at it under a microscope. It kills insects by slicing up their protective outer layer and causes fatal dehydration when they walk through the dusty white powder. You can dust the leaves of your plants to kill leaf-eating bugs or create a barrier of white powder at the base of your plants to stop slugs.  

DE is great for killing slugs, newly hatched Japanese beetles, and wireworms. It works best in dry conditions because rain makes the powder congeal in clumps and lose some of its sharp edges. If it rains, reapply once your plants have dried.

Storage: Make sure to store your DE in an airtight container to keep it dry. Properly stored DE can last indefinitely.

Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt)

Bt is a naturally-occurring bacteria that ruptures the internal organs of leaf-eating insects like caterpillars. It only works on the bugs that eat treated leaves. It has no impact on pests that are directly sprayed so bees and other pollinators are left alone.  

Direct sunlight degrades Bt after a few hours, so apply Bt late in the day when the sun is low. It will work to kill pests during their nightly feeding. You can use Bt every 10 days to control caterpillars and other leaf-eating insects until they're no longer a problem. 

Store: Powdered Bt products can last for five years, while liquid Bt products last only about two years.

Spinosad

Spinosad is another naturally occurring bacteria, Saccharopolyspora spinosa, which produces a deadly neurotoxin that makes infected insects excited to the point of utter exhaustion. After eating it, insects immediately stop feeding and die within a few days. Spinosad works to control all types of caterpillars and some beetles that eat a lot of leaf tissue.

Apply spinosad to dry leaves as soon as you notice leaf-eating pests in the garden. Thoroughly wet both sides of leaves. Much like Bt, spinosad breaks down in direct sun, so late afternoon applications are the most effective.

Spinosad is somewhat absorbed by plant leaves so one treatment can last up to 10 days. Within the first 24 hours of spraying be careful not to let treated leaves come in contact with beneficial insects, like bees. You can protect your good bugs by draping treated plants in row covers, or fabric, for a day.

Storage: Spinosad products last about three years.

Plantskydd

Plantskydd works against rabbits, voles, moose, chipmunks, squirrels, nutria, beaver, groundhogs, and deer. It can last up to six months, even over the winter season. According to company literature, it repels these pests by "emitting an odor that browsing animals associate with predator activity, stimulating a fear-based response that will have garden feeders looking for somewhere else to dine." 

Article originally published on Stone Pier Press, written by Acadia Tucker, a regenerative farmer, climate activist, and author.

Mulch is any material, synthetic or organic, spread over the ground as a covering. Mulch can be leaves, wood chips, newspaper, pebbles, or even plastic and polyester fabrics—basically, anything that stays in place and protects the soil (more on the types of mulch). The protective layer it provides keeps the soil cool and moist in the summer and insulates tender perennials in the winter.

Mulch is a champion at smothering weeds, which saves time and energy for us hardworking gardeners. In the spring, spread two to four inches of mulch on garden beds to prevent new weeds from growing near vegetables and perennials. For really overgrown areas, use damp cardboard as a barrier and cover it with a generous layer of mulch, which is usually enough to knock out even the worst weeds.

Our favorite mulching superpower is its ability to support a healthy ecosystem under your feet, which benefits your crops and the planet. Natural mulches are high in carbon, which soil organisms like microbes and fungi need to survive. These organisms feed on the mulch, breaking it down, capturing carbon, and releasing essential nutrients that plants absorb as they grow.

Plants also pull carbon out of the air to form sugars used to fuel cellular activity. Any excess sugar is released through roots to support soil organisms in exchange for access to nutrients. The alliance between plants and soil organisms locks carbon underground as humus, the dark soil that every gardener lusts over, thus lowering the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Mulch can be applied anytime of the year, but you’ll see the greatest benefits if you do it in mid-spring or fall.

The benefits of spring mulch 

Mulching in the spring prevents weeds from growing, adds nutrients, and helps your soil retain moisture.

Garden expert Acadia Tucker’s go-to spring mulch is a 50/50 mix of shredded leaves and grass clippings because she always has a lot of yard waste. Shoveling leaves and grass onto your plant beds feeds the soil with nutrients well into the fall without having to turn over the compost pile. If you don’t have a steady supply of yard waste, consider asking your friends and family to save theirs.

Another option is to find some hay to use—old, slightly decomposed hay makes for a great spring mulch in the absence of yard waste. If all else fails, you can always buy mulch online or at your local home and garden store.

The benefits of fall mulch

Laying down a protective layer of straw before winter can prevent the pounding rain and winds from washing away fertile topsoil. Straw has the added bonus of insulating plants from the freezing cold. Mulching in the fall is like tucking in your plants to keep them safe against winter rain, sleet, and snow.

In the fall, spread a layer of wood chips over your garden paths. Coarse materials like wood chips act as a cushion to protect the soil from being packed down by winter storms. You don’t want compacted, poorly aerated soil because it’s unable to absorb rainwater, hold nutrients, and support healthy microbial activity and root development.

Weed before mulching

Before spreading your first layer of mulch, take the time to thoroughly weed your garden beds. Mulch is effective at discouraging weed growth, but it can’t do much to kill weeds that are already well established. This task might seem daunting but think of it this way—after a few seasons of mulching, there won't be any more weeds to pull.

You can also lay down a black plastic tarp over the ground you want to clear, and secure it with stakes. The dark plastic warms the soil so intensely that it kills living weeds and weed seeds on the soil surface. This method also allows you to avoid disturbing the soil. Before you lay down the plastic, which you can buy from any online farm or garden store, rake compost into the first inch of soil. If you have plants growing in the bed, simply put the compost on top of the plants. If it’s the late fall, winter, or early spring you'll need to wait six to 10 weeks before removing the plastic. If it's warm outside, late spring through early fall, two to six weeks should be enough time to suffocate the weeds.

A third option is to use so-called lasagna gardening or mulching, where you layer cardboard, seaweed, leaves, grass, and repeat. We prefer this option because it not only kills weeds but builds soil. 

Prep the soil before mulching

Mix compost into the first few inches of your soil to add nutrients and encourage your plants to grow strong and healthy. Then soak the ground. After the first good soak, the soil stays damp longer, sharply reducing the amount of water you’ll need for the rest of the summer. In arid climates, mulching in the spring is the single best thing you can do for your plants.

Another good reason to soak your soil is because organic mulches absorb a lot of water and end up stealing it from plants if there’s not enough to go around. 

Spread the mulch

Load a wheelbarrow or garden cart with your favorite mulch (learn how to choose your mulch here). Scoop mounds of it onto your garden bed every few feet. Use a rake to smooth out the piles. What you want is an even layer of mulch, two to four inches thick. Don’t overdo it! Spreading too much mulch makes it hard for rain to hydrate the soil.

You also don’t want to mulch too closely to the root crowns and stems of your plants, or you may produce rot. Aim for a distance of two inches. For larger perennials and trees, keep mulch at least eight inches from their base. In the spring, push mulch away from the base of perennials to prevent decay and give plants a head start into the new growing season.

One problem with mulch: It can attract pests. Rodents love its insulating powers and burrow into it to stay cozy during cold snaps. Mulch also hides slugs and snails that gnaw on vulnerable leaves in the coolness of night. If you have trouble with pests, avoid putting thick layers of mulch down in the fall.

Consider spreading a layer of coarse wood chips over garden paths each fall; the coarse material acts as a cushion to protect the soil from being packed down.

Article originally published on Stone Pier Press, written by Acadia Tucker, a regenerative farmer, climate activist, and author.

Green businesses are getting creative amid the coronavirus pandemic to keep their stores open. We find their tenacity and commitment to the green economy inspiring in these challenging times. Here are three Green Business Network members that give us hope—and we hope that you will support them, too, if you are able. Supporting sustainable business is a great way to vote with your dollars.  

TS Designs

Buying from a small business makes a huge difference—that is very much so for t-shirt company TS Designs. The business pivoted from their usual production to making upcycled masks from shirts. Their production increased from 250 a week to 250 a day and was able to create three new jobs, as well as give current employees more hours. They are now offering youth size masks and masks with custom branding.

Learn more about TS Designs.

Traditional Medicinals

Traditional Medicinals has been in operation for over forty years, delivering plant-powered wellness in the form of herbal teas. A leader and pioneer in wellness tea in the US and Canada, Traditional Medicinals creates high-quality tea formulas utilizing the knowledge of trained herbalists and rigorously testing organic, medicinal-grade plants. 

“Demand is up for our seasonal and immune teas, but we have to work carefully to keep staffing and supply secure,” says Ben Couch. The company has moved its workforce remote except for the factory. "With one of our major suppliers, we've offered support for more vehicles to organize wild collection or seasonal work so people can safely continue their work."

Their biggest concern is India, a major sourcing country, where interruptions may have impacts into 2020. 

"In India, we've been pushing more sanitation trainings and masks in the communities, and we organized a maskmaking project with our partner in India to get masks for TM [Traditional Medicinals] employees made in the social development program community," Couch says.

You can support Traditional Medicinals by purchasing from their website.

Syracuse Cultural Workers

Syracuse Cultural Workers is a publisher committed to social justice, peace, sustainability, multiculturalism, feminism. They believe art is a critical component of activism. They have published and distributed various materials from calendars, posters, and T-shirts to books, music, and DVDs. 

In the wake of the pandemic, Syracuse Cultural Workers has highlighted 50 books that are “great reads for pandemic times.” These select readings are half off and running out fast.

Learn more about Syracuse Cultural Workers and shop more titles on their website.

Does your business have a creative story?

Green America is continuing to publicize the creative and crucial changes that green businesses are making, including advocacy for small green businesses. If you are a business owner, please sign the American Sustainable Business Council petition to Congress to provide meaningful support to small businesses with respect to healthcare, disaster relief, and expanded unemployment benefits at greenamerica.org/savesmallbusiness.

Previously: 4 Green Businesses Getting Creative During COVID-19

There's a thin line between fertilizing and over-fertilizing. Too few nutrients and your tomatoes and corn never really take off. Too many, and your artichoke and broccoli can suffer. We suggest using organic fertilizers to boost plant growth by feeding the soil. We also encourage you to test your soil every few years so you can know what nutrients your soil needs. 

Organic fertilizers are most effective when used strategically rather than just dumped on a plant. You need to time it right, determine the optimal amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and bear in mind that perennials don't need as many nutrients as annuals.

Time your fertilizer use

Spring: Perennials benefit from a side dressing of nutrients in the spring just before new spring growth begins to push through the soil. In the early spring, add a nitrogen heavy fertilizer to really help your plants take off. You don’t need much or you’ll get leggy plants that flop over.

Mid-season: Sometimes plants need a little extra help when they start producing flowers and fruits. So much energy goes into ripening food that plants get stressed and weak plants emit distress signals that attract pests. Give your flowering perennials a boost in phosphorus to prevent stress and help fruits ripen faster.

Fall: Be careful not to add too many nutrients just before the winter rains set in or they’ll likely wash away. Excess nutrients drain into waterways, promoting harmful algal blooms that suck the oxygen out of water and kill aquatic life. If you do fertilize in the fall, ditch the nitrogen and phosphorus and focus on potassium-based fertilizers.

Know your numbers

If you walk down the aisle of a gardening center, you'll likely be faced with a sea of numbers like 10-10-10 or 20-0-5. So, what do they mean?

The three numbers on fertilizer bags represent the concentration of minerals in the mix: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K). The higher the number, the higher the amount. A mixture of 20-0-5 has four times more nitrogen than potassium, for example, and no phosphorus to speak of. Keep the numbers straight by remembering the key phrase, “up, down, and all around.”

• Up: The first number refers to the amount of available nitrogen or the plant-boosting "up" factor. If you want to quickly add lush growth above ground, go for a nitrogen-heavy fertilizer. Be careful not to add too much or you could have vigorous growth at the expense of below-ground root development. 
• Down: The middle number signals the concentration of phosphorus. A fertilizer with more phosphorus will maximize fruit and flower production, giving you nicer rose blooms and tastier cucumbers. Switch from nitrogen-rich fertilizer to a high-phosphorus fertilizer like bone meal once the first flowers appear on my plants. This encourages my fruits and veggies to ripen faster, which is particularly important if you live where the growing season is short.
• All around: The last number indicates the amount of potassium in the mix. Adding a potassium-rich fertilizer can help your plants fight disease, pests, and stresses from cold, heat, and wind. Consider using a potassium-rich fertilizer like greensand when you tuck your plants in for the winter to help them survive the cold.

Using organic fertilizers

To use these organic fertilizers, simply mix them into the top three inches of your soil before planting and once more midway through the growing season. Do the same for established plants, except add a little to your plant base in the spring.

Any of the following can be used as a stand-alone soil conditioner. You can use two or three different types of organic fertilizers that have particularly high concentrations in nitrogen, phosphorus, or potassium throughout the season to address different concerns. If you'd like to keep it simple and rely on one all-purpose blend, go with homemade compost or purchase a pre-made organic mix from your local garden center.  

Good all-purpose fertilizers

• Homemade compost: Store-bought fertilizers are expensive, but compost can be free. In fact, if you have to pay to get your trash hauled away, composting can save you money by reducing the amount of waste you throw out. Composting is also great for the climate because it doesn't require resource-intensive production methods and diverts strong greenhouse gases that come with the decomposition of organic wastes in landfills. See this composting guide for tips on how to create fertilizer from food, yard waste, and more.
• Mycorrhizal Inoculant (0-0-0): Mycorrhiza (My-cor-rye-zay) is a group of fungi that forms valuable relationships with plants roots. A network of mycelium or long white strings akin to fungal roots attaches to plant roots and enormously increases plants ability to absorb nutrients and water. This isn’t a true fertilizer because it has no nutritional content, but it helps plants to get more out of the soil and helps life in the soil capture carbon. Mix it into compost and mulch piles so that when you spread them in the spring, you inoculate the whole garden.
• Fish Emulsion (5-2-2): Fish emulsion is a liquid fertilizer made from byproducts of the fishing industry. Use this well balanced and fast acting fertilizer all season long on heavy feeders. It does have a very fishy smell, but a few drops of lavender oil can help mask the odor.

Jumpstarting spring growth

• Manure compost: Manure from herbivores and poultry is a great source of nitrogen and organic matter and generally packs more punch than homemade compost. Get it from a nearby farm or buy ready-made composted manure from your local garden store. Manure should be composted for at least three months to kill weed seeds and diseases before adding it to a garden. If that's not possible, you can minimize the risk of weeds by using manure from chickens instead of from horses or cows whose digestive tracts don't eliminate viable weed seeds. If you have your own chickens, simply compost the manure with their bedding material like wood shavings or sawdust. The combination of green manure with brown bed material produces the perfect ratio of nitrogen to carbon for composting. 
• Blood Meal (13-0-0): This dry powder made from cows' blood is a fast-acting source of nitrogen. Use it in soils with a serious lack of nitrogen to jumpstart spring growth. You can add too much, making your soil acidic, so always test your soil. If you’re looking to boost nitrogen mid-season, use plant-based alternatives like alfalfa meal (3-1-2) because it is gentle and supplies other beneficial nutrients that help feed soil microbes that support our crops and capture carbon.

Maximizing production

• Bone Meal (3-15-0): Bone meal is made from ground up animal bones and is widely used to replenish phosphorus and calcium. You can mix bone meal with composted manure for a potent all-around fertilizer for spring. In the fall when you plant flower bulbs and garlic, add bone meal to the bottom of the holes to help promote fall root growth before the winter freeze.
• Greensand (0-0-3): Greensand is a very popular fertilizer collected from the ocean floor or ancient seabeds. This dry powder is a great source of iron, potassium, magnesium, and dozens or other trace minerals. Greensand is great for breaking up clay soils and adding water retention to sandy soils. It’s very gentle so you can’t add too much. You can even use it around seedlings and sensitive plants.
• Guano (12-12-2.5): Guano is made from the droppings of seabirds and bats. It is usually harvested from coastal cliffs and dry caves where the droppings can sit and decompose. Not only does guano add nutrients, but it is full of microbes that help to deter parasitic soil creatures like nematodes. This organic fertilizer has been collected for hundreds of years and you can buy it as an odorless powder.

Fighting pests and climate stress

• Kelp meal (1-0-2): Kelp meal is made from dried ocean seaweed and is full of nutrients, especially potassium. You can buy a bag of it or get permission to collect it from your local beach. Kelp is an exceptionally renewable source of potassium, growing up to three feet per day in ideal ocean climates. You can use kelp meal to treat tired soils that have been intensely cultivated and spray it on plants to help them deal with heat stress in the summer and fight against pests.
• Mulch: Organic mulches like leaves, wood chips, sawdust, and even newspaper add nutrients to your soil while stamping out weeds and protecting your soil from sun, wind, and erosion. Mulch materials are generally carbon rich, so consider sprinkle some alfalfa or blood meal onto the soil before layering on mulch.

Article originally published on Stone Pier Press, written by Acadia Tucker, a regenerative farmer, climate activist, and author.

The key to a successful Climate Victory Garden is preparing your soil. This is where crops gather nutrients to grow your food and where carbon is sequestered as part of the climate solution. Whether you’re updating a current garden, replacing your lawn, or just covering a weedy area, your garden soil needs to be prepared and enhanced for planting.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you need to buy expensive bags of soil from the store. The easiest and most inexpensive methods for preparing the ground are to broadfork and sheet-mulch your garden area.

Note: these processes are best done in the fall, but it can take an entire season to gather supplies, so do your research and plan ahead!

Using a broadfork

The broadfork, also called a U-fork or grelinette, is a tool for manually breaking up densely-packed garden soil like hardpan to improve aeration and drainage. An important part of Climate Victory Gardening is protecting soils and limiting the amount you disturb them. This allows the microorganisms in the garden soil to better hold onto carbon. But, some soils need to be loosened up to create space for roots and more abundant life that make for a healthy garden. A broadfork helps you do this with the least possible disturbance.

Before using the broadfork, consider testing your soil to see what it may be lacking, and add nutrients as recommended while loosening the soil.

To use a broadfork, plunge the tines into the earth, jump on the horizontal bar, and rock back and forth to loosen the soil. Then move forward a couple feet to repeat the process until all the garden soil is aerated. This is preferable to tilling and completely turning the earth over because it’s less disruptive to life in the soil.

That said, this is a substantial tool and one you likely won’t need often. Your best bet is to find one at a local tool share program or contact local garden groups to see if you can borrow one.

Once you’ve aerated the entire area, you're ready to plant. Or, build up your soil health even more with sheet-mulching or lasagna gardening methods.

Sheet-mulching and lasagna gardening

Lasagna gardening, also known as sheet-mulching, is best for when your garden soil isn’t terribly hard or compacted (if it is, consider using a broadfork first). It’s a free way to build rich, healthy soils and is a good option if you have an abundance of weeds or are unable to physically turn your soil with a broadfork.

This method gets its name from the delicious layers or sheets of organic matter that you’re creating to feed the organisms in your garden soil. As these layers decompose, they feed soil life and make nutrients more accessible for the plant you grow.

These layers can be applied directly on top of grass or weeds (except particularly resistant and invasive weeds like crabgrass, which need to be removed by hand). Cover the area with cardboard and/or 3 to 5 layers of newspaper and wet it down to keep it from blowing away. The next layer can be any organic material that you would use in a compost pile. Alternate layers of green materials, like grass clippings and raw vegetable peels, with brown materials like dried leaves, straw, or shredded newspaper. Think of green layers as more wet ingredients and browns as drier. Continue to alternate the green and brown layers until your garden bed is 18 to 24 inches high. Finish with a layer of mulch and thoroughly water the area.

Timing and gathering materials

If you want to plant immediately after layering your lasagna garden, consider using more soil-like ingredients in your layers than paper and cardboard. Otherwise, it’s best to plant when the layers have started to decompose or to cut out areas to plant. Because of that, these garden soil preparations might be best done at the end of a growing season. Preparing your land in the fall gives these materials a chance to age and decay into garden soil over the winter.

That said, it could take an entire season to collect enough materials for lasagna gardening, so start gathering today! You can save newspapers and cardboard, but avoid glossy paper, tape, and staples. If you don’t have these materials at home, recycling bins can be good sources. Toss food and yard wastes in your compost pile (or keep in the freezer), noting that you can use these materials to layer even if they’re not fully decomposed. In the fall, collect dry leaves.

Pro tip: No time to collect this diverse list of materials? Use the late summer and fall to build a circular 16-gauge wire fence enclosure and alternate 6-10 inches of shredded leaves with a thin layer of soil or spent coffee grounds to promote decomposition. Water each layer and repeat until full. This makes for a great source of material for future plantings.

Both using a broadfork and sheet-mulching techniques helps soil retain carbon by adding organic material, making these methods powerful tools in the climate solution. If you’re using the Climate Victory Gardening practices that support soil health, you shouldn’t have to disturb your garden soil or repeat this process again. At the end of future growing seasons, remove dead or dying garden plants, spread compost or wood chips, and consider adding cover crops to increase fertility.

Written by Tom Van Dyke, a Master Gardener in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, whose mission is to grow food sustainably. He has advanced degrees in food systems management and taught about food issues at the university level before retiring in 2013. (Top Photo Credit: mwms1916)

The climate crisis is not an immovable object. It is a battle with many fronts and people around the globe looking for solutions for the problems that they see, working within their own expertise and communities. These four climate warriors who come from different walks of life but share the same goals of mobilizing citizen and government action to stop the planet from warming even more and to protect the people on it. Their stories give insight to their hard work and give needed inspiration as we forge ahead, together.

Dr. Sacoby Wilson, Scholar

What do you struggle with the most as a scholar?
I think the struggle is with academia as a whole. There’s a lot of scientific research that’s just done to discover or produce knowledge, but not enough work that focuses on actually problem-solving. So why aren’t we doing more science to actually solve problems? Why aren’t we doing more science that focuses on environmental benefits? Why aren’t we doing science focused on building healthier communities? I think that’s the bigger issue.

How can others help you in your work?
I think one of the things that I’m really excited about is community science, or another term is citizen science. You do not have to have a PhD to be a scientist. That’s the beauty of science. I think the more we train regular everyday folks to be scientists, the more folks will be in a social movement, the more participants that we can have to affect change, to improve environmental health, to improve public health. So, I think educational organizations, youth organizations, STEM organizations, they have an important role to play.

What is the most rewarding part of your work?
I think the most rewarding part of my work is really community engagement, being able to actually work with communities. Because I work best when I have good relationships with folks, and I see a lot of people that I work with as part of my extended family.

One of the most rewarding experiences more recently has been working with folks in the Gulf Coast Equity Consortium. They have historically Black colleges working with community organizations in five communities across the Gulf Coast working in Houston; in Lower Ninth in New Orleans; in Biloxi, Mississippi; Africatown in Mobile, Alabama; and also in Florida.

So, I get a chance to work with my mentors, some environmental justice icons, and we bring our different skills to translating science to action for those community based organizations.

Interviewed by Mary Meade

Raina Ivanova, Youth Activist

As the group Children vs Climate Crisis what have you been able to accomplish so far?
I think we’ve helped people realize that it’s not just us because there are many people in this fight. We’ve done complaints and strikes and organized people, and by doing something so new with this complaint, we could get more attention leading to that topic. There’s also a realization I think people can have about how the way [they] live is causing those things—the way most people from Germany or from Europe live is causing those problems. When you start thinking about that, you cannot really stop thinking about it and then you, of course, take action.

For people who feel like they’re not as involved as they could be, how can they help you in your mission?
When we talk about the climate movement, I feel like we separate the activists from everyone else, but I think that’s a mistake because we’re all in this together. We’re all just one, we’re all affected by this. For me, there’s no question on why we should act because we all have to.

If you’re a person who’s not involved yet in the movement, you shouldn’t separate yourself from the people who already are because we’re all just people out there trying to do something better. And if you’re trying to help, you can start at your own home. It doesn’t have to be something huge, just see how you can reduce your own carbon emissions. I feel like what most people don’t see is that it’s not only the big picture, it’s every single person individually that needs to make a change.

How do you how do you keep yourself motivated in your work?
I think when I started in this movement, I kept myself motivated because I knew that the things we did were good, and that it would help others even if they just were small things. And then also, as I kept on doing those things, I got to know a lot of other amazing activists out there. I try to not see the crisis as completely negative because you can become close with the community of people around you.

Interviewed by Asher Weinstein

Kristina Dahl, Climate Scientist

What are the most challenging and rewarding parts of your work?
One of the more rewarding parts of the work that we do is when we hear that communities are using the information that we’ve developed. We really aim to produce analyses that can be picked up by policymakers and decision-makers at the local level. When we get news that they’ve incorporated our data and analyses into their climate action plans or into future development plans, that’s extremely rewarding because it tells us that communities really do need this information in order to make sound decisions about their future.

One of the more challenging aspects of the work is that sometimes it feels like no matter how much data or how much science we produce, it’s hard to move the needle on public opinion on the need for climate action. And we know from communication studies that it’s not data, necessarily, that changes people’s minds. But as a scientist, it’s hard not to look at this data and wonder how people could maintain the position that we should not take action on climate change.

Are there any misconceptions about what you do?
I think there are still a lot of misconceptions about the science of climate change. Overall, public-opinion polling is showing a trend towards more and more Americans seeing climate change as a real problem and understanding that humans are the cause of that.

There are still surprisingly few people who think that scientists are unanimous in their understanding of climate change and the fact that humans are causing it. So the general public still thinks that there’s an active discussion about that in the scientific community when really there hasn’t been for probably a decade or more.

I also think that you hear a lot of skepticism about the fidelity of climate models. People say, “Oh, it’s just a model and models are always wrong.” No model is ever perfect.

A recent study went back and looked at all our climate models since the 1970s, when they were much more simplistic, and said, “How well did those models predict the temperature change that’s now already seen?” And the answer is that they’ve done very, very well, even our very simple models back in the 70s. So I would say that there’s a misconception about how well our models can simulate reality, and in truth, they do really excellent job of doing so.

How do you keep yourself motivated in your work?
I love the outdoors. I love nature. It’s what attracted me to the earth sciences to begin with. For me, visiting the places that I love like Yosemite National Park,and seeing the destruction that’s been caused to the forest there by recent droughts and an infestation of beetles that are killing the trees there, is both extremely saddening and extremely motivating. I want my children to be able to enjoy the natural world around just as I have been able to. Preserving what we have and making sure that the future is faced and the earth is as wondrous as it has been, for me in my lifetime, is what motivates me.

Interviewed by Eleanor Greene

Haile Thomas, Community Builder

What do you think you’ve been able to accomplish so far?
I’ve spoken to over 80,000 people around the world since 2010 when I started my activism and have taught 40,000 young people through my nonprofit. Those are things that I’m proud of but I tend to focus on the days when I can just show up, share my journey, and be of service to the community.

How can people support this mission?
I think the biggest way people can help is just to be open to learning about these things. I think that the first roadblock to social engagement is just a lack of awareness and willingness to learn and dismantle perceptions that you may have about health and food, a certain group of people, or what’s going on in the world. Just being open to doing that is the first step and I encourage my community of followers to do that and join conversations that may be full of diverse perspectives.

I’m also excited to release my cookbook, Living Lively, in July. It’s full of plant-based recipes and advice from some amazing leaders I’ve met on my wellness journey.

Do you think there are any misconceptions about what you do?
For sure. I get comments that the health space is for those who don’t look like me. Being African American, I feel that we have unintentionally lost touch with parts of our culture that are rooted in holistic health. Most of us have been forced to look at our lives through a survival lens, without realizing that surviving doesn’t necessarily mean that we are being nourished. It may look different person to person, but everyone on this planet should perceive themselves as fit to invest in their personal wellness.

How do you keep yourself motivated?
What’s motivated me has shifted over time and I think that now it’s more grounded that ever. Right now it’s really rooted in helping others realize their power and importance of prioritizing their wellbeing and how those things unleash their potential to be of service to others. It’s special to me because everyday I find moments in my life where there’s an opportunity to help someone feel seen and heard and that validation is something I want everyone to experience for themselves and pass on to others.

Interviewed by Sytonia Reid

Climate change has wide implications for both coastal and landlocked cities across the globe. But building resiliency and adapting to climate change can have disastrous effects for low-income and minority communities in the form of climate gentrification.

What Is Climate Gentrification?

In a classic example of gentrification, developers see an untapped commercial value in a district and build what they think will attract well-paying consumers. This drives up property values and pushes out residents and businesses that cannot afford the higher cost of living—generally, these displaced peoples are communities of color.

Conversely, climate gentrification is caused by displacement or a fear of displacement—whether that be from devastating natural disasters or extreme changes in weather patterns—that result in people moving to different locations.

“It’s about a shift in consumer preferences,” says Jesse Keenan, an Associate Professor at the Tulane University School of Architecture. “In a classic model of gentrification, you’re talking about a very specific neighborhood or district parts of the city, but with climate gentrification, displacement in Louisiana or Florida could lead to climate gentrification in Atlanta.”

Escaping Rising Seas

A low-lying city with considerable beachfront property, Miami’s coastal areas are already threatened by sea-level rise. As wealthy residents begin to flee their expensive homes by the beach, lower-income neighborhoods are faced with the reality of climate gentrification.

The impacts of climate change are no distant danger—the city saw nearly 20 instances of abnormal floods on otherwise pleasant days in 2018 that made entire stretches of the city unusable until the waters receded. As sea levels continue to rise, these “sunny-day floods” will be increasingly common.

Wealthy Miami residents have long preferred beachfront properties, where housing prices are considerably higher than those in inland neighborhoods. But that’s changing quickly.

Harvard researchers, including Keenan while he was on faculty there, examined changes in housing values. They found that Miami neighborhoods with higher elevation have seen dramatic increases in property values from 1971 to 2017 while low-lying areas have seen a decline in value. This holds true across the city, regardless of proximity to the beach, demonstrating the understanding that any low-elevation area will soon be prone to flooding.

For the residents of high-ground inland areas like the historically Black Little Haiti and Liberty City neighborhoods, these changes represent a sudden and unwanted jump in living expenses, as rents have already begun to increase and some residents have had to leave their homes.

Building Resilient Housing

Fortunately, local governments in those neighborhoods have developed plans to deal with both aspects of the crisis, with the city recently passing a $400 million “Forever Bond” for climate resiliency. Projects funded by the bond will include road reinforcements and the construction of a sea wall, along with $100 million set aside to spend on public and affordable housing.

Meanwhile, Miami-Dade County has launched numerous resiliency projects dedicated to protecting Miami residents, with the recognition that the city has among the starkest income divides in the country. Katherine Hagemann, the Resilience Program Manager for the county, believes that housing needs to be a priority of any climate response plan.

“We know that we have a lot of disparity in terms of wealth and income in our community,” says Hagemann. “So that’s one of our main priorities of autonomy is trying to make sure that we use all of our resources to ensure that new housing units don’t push out residents and to preserve the existing affordable housing.”

The plan and housing grant are useful steps in the fight against climate gentrification, but some residents want to take the preservation of their neighborhood into their own hands. Struggle for Miami’s Affordable and Sustainable Housing (SMASH), an anti-gentrification organization founded to protect the elevated and historically-black Liberty City neighborhood, acts on the belief that a Community Land Trust (CLT) is the most effective way for residents to protect themselves from rising rents.

Trenise Bryant, a long-time resident of Liberty City, has worked with SMASH to create a CLT in her area on which to construct a handful of new, affordable housing units.

“This community land trust is so, so, so important for this community because […] it’s about creating wealth in the community,” said Bryant in an interview with NPR from March 2019. “I wanted to get the voices of the community, making sure their voices are heard ’cause it’s not about me.”

The CLT gives her that ability, as the apartment building constructed on the community land will be run entirely by area residents, giving them leverage over pricing and keeping bigger developers from installing unaffordable units. These projects can be expensive, but in this case, the land was donated.

The people and government of Miami know how little time remains to act on climate, so whether through city-funded or community-led housing, Miami will soon be a model for cities around the country facing similar problems.

Seeking Cooler Climates

On the other side of the country, Flagstaff, Arizona, is dealing with a very different climate problem: heat.

“The 1980s saw a significant shift in our temperatures and so our precipitation is now coming in more rain events than snow events,” says Nicole Antonopoulos, sustainability director for the City of Flagstaff. “A good portion of our economy is made up of tourism, and winter tourism at that.”

Unlike the rest of Arizona, which is known for its desert, Flagstaff sits at 6,909 feet, making it a cool reprieve from the rest of the state. In the past, Flagstaff was most popular during winter for ski season—yet as temperatures reach new records, many of those visitors are returning for summer to escape cities like Phoenix that regularly experience days hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Those are ‘our weekend climate refugees,’ if you will,” says Antonopoulos. “We get, I think, six million tourists a year coming through town and that puts of tremendous impact on our infrastructure. And then when you add in that additional element of climate refugees, even if they’re just escaping the extremes for the weekend, it still has an incredible impact on our natural resources.”

In 2018, the City of Flagstaff published its Climate Action and Adaptation plan to respond to the effects of climate change. It has been well-received by the people of Flagstaff and Antonopoulos attributes this to the thousand-plus community members that were engaged in the drafting process.

“In the last calendar year, we engaged with more than 4,000 members of our community implementing the plan,” says Antonopoulos. “We’ve started our Climate Ambassadors program and our Climate Leaders program, which educate community members about the climate plan and about climate-related issues and to help us communicate our goals, as well as meaningful conversation, and how individuals can take action.”

However, Keenan warns that cities must be wary of deepening inequality when taking climate actions.

Equity as a Foundation

Historically, cities have built energy infrastructure in ways that most benefit wealthier people and neighborhoods, leaving communities of color to deal with issues like lesser access and pollution.

Keenan warns that this pattern could continue in climate plans; what looks like climate resiliency to a wealthy neighborhood may jeopardize a poorer neighborhood, deepening wealth inequality. If cities don’t incorporate equity in their climate plans from the very beginning, vulnerable communities will be left out of important conversations and will be ill-equipped against climate disasters. Therefore, if clean energy infrastructure is to be socially just as well as green, it must be equitably distributed.

Antonopoulos kept this in mind when building the Flagstaff climate action plan. The plan notes that low-income residents, communities of color, and tribal nations disproportionately experience environmental harm and pollution and that these conditions will worsen under climate-related stressors. Like Miami, one such stressor is climate gentrification; however, Flagstaff’s case is unique because much of their population is seasonally transient.

“We have about a 45 percent rental market,” says Antonopoulos, noting that many houses are people’s second or third homes. “So, our demographics are really interesting when we talk about gentrification because houses that are affordable are very hard to come by.”

Flagstaff’s equity strategy includes a checklist that the city government must consider when implementing climate actions, such as sharing benefits, measuring impacts, and building economic opportunity, among others. These considerations were drawn from the City of Portland, Oregon’s climate action plan, which is recognized as a leading document on integrating equity to climate plans.

“[We asked,] how do we incorporate community values and beliefs? And gentrification is a critical part of that conversation as well,” says Antonopoulos.

The city is currently in the process of building a climate and equity working group to build partnerships and engage with its vulnerable communities, as well as identify needs and recommendations for equitable implementation. This includes making sure green infrastructure like renewable energy and resilient housing is available to vulnerable populations.

Resiliency in the Wake of Climate Change

While Miami and Flagstaff are examples of cities taking action, no city is immune to the effects of global climate change and thus, the potential for climate gentrification.

“Climate gentrification has been also caught up with parallel conversations about climate migration and domestic migration, because it becomes a first-order way to think about why people are moving and the implications of where they move to,” says Keenan. “It can operate district-to-district, region-to-region, state-to-state, or even trans-nationally.”

Climate change has the potential to deepen existing inequalities. As cities prepare for climate adaption, engaging vulnerable communities will be the key to enabling social justice and building truly resilient cities.

You may hate weeding, but there are reasons to like weeds—or at least respect them. 

Weeds are good for your soil, and there's a lot we can learn from weeds. They're resilient enough to grow pretty much everywhere, no matter how poor or barren the earth. They cover and give soil life, much like a living mulch, which is a boon for the climate. And seasonal cycles of weeds growing and dying build up nutrients in the soil and make way for larger plants, like shrubs and trees. Without weeds, the natural landscape we love would be very different.

Weeds also tell you a lot about your soil. Before pulling weeds, try reading what they have to say about your planting area. Weeds can signal whether you have soil that’s low in nutrients, high in acid, or even waterlogged. We highly recommend buying a field guide to weeds growing in your region so you can learn from them.

Soggy soil

Weeds that signal soggy soil: dock, horsetails, chickweed, sedge, and willows

What to do about it: Wet and soggy soils are hard to drain and frankly not worth messing with. Besides, given that wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate, it’s probably better for the planet if you just let it be.

Compacted soil

Weeds that signal compacted soil: chicory, knotweed, dandelion, and bindweed

What to do about it: Packed soil limits the ability of plants to extend their roots and absorb vital nutrients for growth. A good way to break up the soil is to plant it with a cover crop like clover or vetch in the fall. The roots can punch through the soil, loosening it in time for the next season’s crop. Another option is to use a broadfork, which is a large heavy four-pronged steel fork that loosens the soil without having to till it.

Acidic soil

Weeds that signal acidic soil: plantain, sorrel, and stinging nettle

What to do about it: Soil that is acidic has a very low pH and, unless you are growing blueberries, your plants will struggle to survive. You can change your soil pH by adding lime, follow instructions from the supplier. The lower your pH, the more lime you will need.

If you don’t want to add lime, you can plant blueberries, rhubarb, endive, shallots, potatoes, or watermelon in that area because they can tolerate soils as low as 5.0 pH.

Basic soil

Weeds that signal basic soil: Queen Anne’s lace, chicory, peppergrass, and chickweed

What to do about it: Basic soil is alkaline, which is another way of saying it has a very high pH. A high pH is usually a result of calcium-rich bedrock. Treating basic soils with elemental sulfur quickly lowers the pH, but we prefer adding lots of compost instead because it yields a bigger return. Compost acts to buffer the soil and prevent sudden changes in pH. The complex molecular structure of compost provides a great deal of hydrogen atoms, lowering pH and enhancing soil’s ability to hold onto nutrients; not to mention the carbon benefits of composting.

Another option is to plant your basic soil with asparagus or members of the cucumber family, which do just fine in a high pH environment.

Fertile soil

Weeds that signal fertile soil: foxtail, chicory, purslane, and lambsquarters

What to do about it: Every gardener dreams about having fertile soil, but the downside is that weeds love it too. This means you have to be highly vigilant about removing weeds as soon they crop up and before they start to seed, or they’ll wreak havoc on the rest of your plants.

Dry and sandy soil

Weeds that signal dry and sandy soil: sorrel, thistle, yarrow, and nettle

What to do about it: Sandy soil is not a terrible thing. In fact, many vegetables love the loose, well-drained stuff. Best way to deal with this is to grow plants that love living in it, which include carrots, beets, onion, and garlic. Toss in some extra compost for a nutrient-boost.

Heavy clay soil

Weeds that signal heavy clay soil: plantain, nettle, and quack grass

What to do about it: Most plants have a difficult time thriving in heavy clay because the dense soil makes it difficult for healthy roots to develop. But some plants do just fine in this dense environment, including shallow-rooted annuals, like lettuce, chard, and beans, which appreciate the moisture. Deep-rooted top-heavy crops, like broccoli and cabbage, also benefit from the stability offered by clay. 

Article originally published on Stone Pier Press, written by Acadia Tucker, a regenerative farmer, climate activist, and author.

In the Los Angeles neighborhood of University Park, west of downtown and east of the University of Southern California campus, people felt ill. Residents and those who spent time at the schools, libraries, and shops in the area were getting nosebleeds, headaches, and feeling shortness of breath.

This neighborhood of South-Central Los Angeles was about to join a familiar fight—one against the fossil fuel industry in their own backyards. These fights are often spearheaded by communities of color, as their historical lack of power means they’re more likely to be stepped on by dirty industries and ignored by government regulators as pollution and other types of foul play seep into their neighborhoods. In this story, we meet environmental justice leaders in two such communities who refuse to be silenced.

Drilling in the City of Angels

You wouldn’t expect to find an active oil well downtown in one of the country’s largest cities, but it’s common. LA has been home to productive oil operations since 1890. The city has thousands of active wells—580,000 Angelenos lives within a quarter mile of an active oil well, according to Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling L.A. (STAND-LA), a coalition of environmental justice groups that seeks to end all drilling in the area.

When people in University Park started feeling sick in 2013, Esperanza Community Housing, a community development nonprofit that owns affordable housing units, organized 350 community members to write official complaints to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Regulators who showed up to investigate found an active oil well with a leak.

“It’s our understanding that 70 percent of the oil drilling sites that are in sensitive land areas are in communities of color—principally Black and Brown communities bear the brunt of this,” says Hugo Garcia, campaign coordinator for People Not Pozos (People Not Oil Wells), a campaign run by Esperanza Community Housing. “It’s an environmental justice issue as well as a public health issue.”

STAND-LA Finds its Footing

University Park’s well is operated by an extraction company called AllenCo Energy, which ramped up production by 400 percent after taking over the site in 2009, according to Garcia. The land the well is on, however, is owned by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which stayed silent, even after community members sent a video to the Pope in which they pleaded to him to shut down the site.

One of those community members was Nalleli Cobo, who started to feel chest pains in third grade while living across the street from the site in an apartment with her sister, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. Cobo’s mother, Monic Uriarte, works for Esperanza Community Housing, so naturally the family joined the People Not Pozos fight.

“Nalleli has been involved in this fight since she was little,” Uriarte said in an interview with Univision in 2016. “She lived the consequences of pollution and she realized that it was unfair. My daughter knows how to speak out and is not afraid to fight for the welfare of our community.”

The community mounted a pressure campaign joined by other groups fighting the oil industry in their own neighborhoods to form the STAND-LA coalition. When the Los Angeles Times investigated the story, it published a picture of a toddler with a bloody nose, causing alarm across the area.

“And then all of a sudden it changed the regulators who had been pretty much asleep at the wheel,” says Garcia.

It took years of pushing the city, including more reports of health problems and air pollution, demonstrations, community meetings, and canvassing. The city finally hired a petroleum administrator, a position that had been unfilled in the government for 40 years. Garcia was hopeful when an inter-agency group convened in 2018 to facilitate information between regulators, key agencies, and the community, but was disheartened when selected regulators and agencies were invited but the community was not. But finally, he was allowed to attend to represent University Park residents.

Victory for Esperanza

On March 5, 2020, regulators ordered AllenCo Energy to plug its wells and decommission its oil drilling site in University Park. This order is pending an appeal filed by the company.

But the fight isn’t over. Garcia says cleanup of the contaminated site is of utmost importance. He hopes the site will be decontaminated and re-purposed into a facility that benefits the community, like affordable housing or recreation space.

People fighting Big Oil in LA are not alone. For Native Americans in rural North Dakota, the enemy is fracking.

Fracking in the Bakken

Underneath the Fort Berthold Reservation and spanning 200,000 square miles from North Dakota to Montana and Canada lies the Bakken shale formation. With its billions of gallons of crude oil, the area became an epicenter for hydraulic fracking and the second largest oil producer in the US in less than a decade. That has repercussions for Native American peoples who must live next to the steady ecological destruction of their land.

Kandi White of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Tribes is a Native organizer and the climate and energy campaign coordinator for the Indigenous Environmental Network. She grew up in a community called New Town on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, about 100 miles down the Missouri River from Williston, the fracking hub of North Dakota.

“When I was 20, I got diagnosed with cancer. It was a stage four sarcoma tumor,” says White. “A lot of people around me had cancer. A lot of people still do have cancer. At the time, I just thought that was normal.”

This is a common experience for Native Americans, who have a disproportionately high disease burden and lower life expectancy than other Americans, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. Their exposure to pollution is much higher than other groups because of the way that First Nations were designated land by the government in the form of reservations; unable to move, industrial development industries set up, putting Native populations at risk.

“There’s no law that is on our side,” says White. “It’s never been more clear than it was at Standing Rock that the laws been twisted to make sense only for those people that it benefits.”

Native Women in Danger

The explosive growth of fracking jobs outside of the reservation has attracted tens of thousands of new residents, most of them men. Workers are housed in mobile home complexes called “mancamps” and conditions are so bad that, according to North Dakota’s Uniform Crime Reports, murder, aggravated assault, rape, and robbery increased by 125 percent between 2005 and 2013.

For Native women, the fracking industry has brought violence. Williston’s rape rate is nearly four times the national average and a Native woman is seven times more likely to be raped than a woman living in New York City according to an article from Portland State University. White expresses that many in her community at the Fort Berthold Reservation feel cornered to the point that activists and tribal leaders are in disagreement.

“We’re fighting against our own tribal councils,” she says. “We’re fighting against our own people that are like, ‘They’re going to take it from us anyways, based on our history: they gave us diseases, they killed off our numbers, they put us on reservations, they built a dam that flooded our lands. We cannot win. We might as well take the money.’”

People’s Rights and Climate Change

Despite these challenges, White continues to promote Indigenous rights and environmental justice.

“We have to keep moving forward and protecting our Native nations and protecting our elders and protecting our identities and our lifeways,” White says. “I want people to not get stuck in apathy. I want them to understand that they can do things to empower themselves.”

Climate science is nearing First Nations’ understanding of ecological balance—Project Drawdown lists Indigenous knowledge as a solution to the climate crisis.

“It’s funny to see scientists catching up now with what we’ve always known just by being land-based people,” says White. “It was always an urgent conversation to say you cannot do this, you cannot practice a capitalistic model because it will come back to harm us as humanity.”

To support Indigenous resistance, demand megabanks end fossil fuel financing. Goldman Sachs may have caved to the Gwich’in nation’s demands to end funding of oil drilling in the arctic refuge, but banks are still financing fossil fuels in the Bakken and elsewhere. Tell JPMorgan Chase to stop funding fossil fuels.

From Los Angeles, Garcia reminds us that organizers’ have one of the biggest jobs in their communities. He urges other community organizers, whether they’re fighting fossil fuel companies or other environmental justice fights, to keep a clear head as they lead their communities, hopefully, to victory.

“It is the organizers task to bring light, to lift up and bring clarity to strategic, tangible issues that provide compelling incentive for the community to organize,” says Garcia. “After all, in any campaign, it’s a grasp of one’s objective living condition, and what it can be, that dictates the impetus for residents to organize. It’s all about: ‘Dare to struggle—dare to win.’”

Most of us don’t know the entire history of our homes and the land they’re built on. And, renters likely know even less. In some cases, your yard may have had uses in the past that make it unfit for growing food altogether. Or, there could have been potentially polluting industry near your home and garden. 

If you have any question, it’s best to test. 

Soil tests can give you information about possible contaminants and toxins. They’re great for learning what nutrients and supplements your soil might need to produce a healthy and successful garden too.

You can often find soil testing kits at local agricultural extension office for your state university, even if that university is hundreds of miles away. You can also contact the university or lab directly to have a kit mailed to you (find the contact info for your nearest office here). While you may be able to find test kits online or at local garden and hardware stores, we suggest going through a local university to ensure the tests are conducted in professional labs. 

The kit consists of a simple plastic tube or Ziplock bag for gathering a small soil sample and instructions.

Early spring is a great time of year to test your soil. It’s best to do it when the ground is thawed and digging up the samples won’t disturb growing plants. But really, you can do this just about any day of the year.

Learn more about the details of what you can expect from testing your soil—including tracking soil carbon for your Climate Victory Garden.

If you can, choose a garden location that's visible from your kitchen window and is close to a water source, so you’re reminded to harvest, water, and care for your garden often. Consider zoning laws, HOA restrictions, and previous (possibly) toxic uses of your property and its soil. Discuss options with your landlord if you’re in a rental.

Observation is an important step before breaking ground and will ensure greater success down the line. Spend some time watching how the sun and shade move across your property during different times of day, keeping in mind that many plants need at least six to eight hours of direct sun each day. Notice areas that are breezy or protected, knowing that most plants don’t enjoy being pushed around by the wind. Go out after a heavy rain to see if the water is diverted from some areas or pooling in others, because many veggies are thirsty but can suffer without good drainage. Observe critters—including those that want to eat your garden, like deer—and garden helpers like bees.

If you don’t have a lot of space, get creative with what you have, and look for places to plant along fence lines, between sidewalks and curbs, and open areas in your neighborhood. You might plant food amongst your existing ornamental landscaping. Want to convert a lawn? Check out this technique.

Dealing with lots of shade? Some plants prefer shade (read your seed packets!), but you’ll likely struggle to grow fruits and vegetables if your yard get less than two hours of sun during the day. Similarly, if you face limitations due to toxic soils, stubborn landlords, or just a lack of open space, consider growing in containers outdoors or even indoors. Community gardens, local farms, and helping friends and neighbors in their gardens are also good options if you don’t have land to grow on.

Read the beginner gardener toolkit for more about choosing a location for your garden.

Socially responsible investing is a way your money can change the world. You can do it by moving your money from Wall Street banks to community development banks, screening the worst companies out of your portfolio, or using shareholder advocacy to push corporate management to change.

Direct investing or impact investing is another socially responsible strategy in which people invest directly in companies and projects making change, like to support sustainable, organic, and regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture is a way of farming that puts the focus on soil health, which has the added benefit of also drawing carbon out of the atmosphere. Regenerative agriculture has the power to reverse climate change.

When Soil Health is Wealth

Joshua Humphreys is an analyst who studies how financial products can solve sustainability and social justice issues, including a strong emphasis on climate. In his role as president and senior fellow at the Croatan Institute, a think tank that specializes in these topics, Humphreys recently worked on a report called “Soil Wealth,” which investigated the demand for products to finance regenerative agriculture across the country and the world.

The report found $321 billion in investment opportunities to support sustainable agriculture and $47.5 billion in investment for regenerative agriculture specifically, suggesting that investors have a growing interest in it. According to Croatan Institute’s modeling based on data from Project Drawdown, those investments could have big returns: a shift to climate-friendly farming could mitigate 170 GtCO2e (i.e. 170 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent), while generating nearly $10 trillion in net financial returns.

Humphreys says growing numbers of institutional investors are seeing what a good investment regenerative agriculture is. It’s more resilient—the report shows that regenerative land recovers two weeks sooner than conventional farms in the same area, as shown by farmland near the Missouri River after flooding last year. Humphreys says that regenerative farms clustered in “organic hotspots” are also seeing socio-economic benefits.

Investing in Land, Building Resilience

One example of a company that gives investors a chance to finance sustainable agriculture is the Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT. Since its inception in 2007, the company has provided secure land access to farmers who were committed to at least USDA Organic practices—though some farmers go further—aiming for Bee Better Certification, Savory Hub distinction, and other up-and-coming sustainable certifications.

“Practices like no-till and permaculture can be used within USDA Organic systems,” Claire Mesesan, communications director of Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT, says. “In fact, we work with many farmers practicing reduced or no till. We have two farms that use permaculture practices and others that draw inspiration from the system.”

Iroquois Valley caters to investors with quite a bit of money to invest—at least $10,000—which means most of its investors are family-run foundations, NGOs, and businesses, though the company says its investor base is about 32 percent individual investors.

Mesesan explains the high cost of entry to Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT investment is because as a small business buying property that costs on average $1 million per plot, it is cost-prohibitive to pursue small investments.

Today, Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT is invested in about 60 farms comprised of more than 12,000 acres, across 14 states.

One of those farms is Main Street Project, a nonprofit in Dakota County, Minnesota, on 100 acres of transitioning farmland. Its transition is to a regenerative system that uses chickens alongside perennial and annual agriculture crops along with trees to create a biodiverse and functional farm.

Main Street Project, a participant in Green America’s Regenerative Supply Network, has an added mission of supporting rural Latinx immigrant communities by providing bilingual jobs and training for people who are often victims of the conventional agriculture system. The nonprofit aims to provide a “path to economic stability, wealth creation, and empowerment for aspiring immigrant farmers.”

“Main Street Project exists to innovate a path toward a more just and resilient food system for all people. Our 100-acre farm serves as a safe space to share land, knowledge, food and stories—a sanctuary for community building,” says Rocky Casillas Aguirre, communications manager at Main Street Project. “Having nonprofit organizations and farms like ours that put people first is absolutely paramount, especially in the times we are facing as a country and global society. Together is the only way forward.”

CDFIs are Making Sustainable Attainable

When it comes to making big impact for small sustainable businesses, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) have outsized impact. CDFI is a federal designation for a variety of financial institutions that serve economically marginalized communities. They have low account minimums so more people can use their services and support their work.

CDFIs can provide products based on their clientele and membership—often at a smaller scale than would be feasible for big banks. CDFIs can also have community priorities, as Self-Help Credit Union sees the importance of sustainable food systems in local communities. For example, Happy Dirt is a farmer- and staff-owned organic wholesale produce distributor based in Durham, North Carolina. Over the years, Self-Help has provided Happy Dirt with loans for a building purchase, renovation, and equipment, so the small business can grow.

Philip Otienoburu is the food system financing sector leader at Self Help. He explains that conventional banks see small businesses as a bigger risk—they may have limited collateral, especially when they are owned by entrepreneurs of color who are historically under-banked and often lack the financial infrastructure to support their businesses.

“We believe that the food that goes to communities needs to be wholesome— healthy for consumers and good for the planet,” says Otienoburu. “We are not just doing it for the sake of feeding people, but also promoting sustainable development in a socially responsible way by building community wealth around these businesses.”

One credit union has introduced a new strategy. Maine Harvest Federal Credit Union is making waves in the financial world just as it does for farmers in Maine. Croatan Institute’s report highlights Maine Harvest’s approach, as it’s the first financial institution in the country completely focused on supporting local food and its producers.

It carries out its mission by providing business loans to farmers and food producers in Maine to foster the local food movement. By making deposits or investing in certificates of deposit at Maine Harvest Federal Credit Union, anyone can support Maine farmers. How You Can Join the Movement In addition to using direct investing or community development options to invest in farmers and regenerative agriculture, there are many ways to you can use your dollars to support sustainable and local farmers.

• Buy from a CSA. Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) is like a farmer’s market, but instead of buying piecemeal every week, you buy shares at the beginning of the season, which gives local farmers much-needed cash and get produce on a schedule. Check localharvest.org for CSA options—you can even see what CSAs use organic or regenerative practices.

• Shop from farmers. If CSAs’ upfront buy-in isn’t affordable, you still have the option of going to a farmer’s market as needed. Ask sellers there what types of sustainable practices they use. Find examples of what to ask here.

• Keep money in a CDFI, which may be making business loans to farmers in your community (you can ask!). Use our Get a Better Bank database to find CDFIs in your area.

• If you have more to invest, speak to your financial advisor about getting involved with these financial products pushing the envelope and making big impacts.

In Durham, North Carolina, a young man rakes a dirt path in between rows of leafy soybeans. In Alabama’s Black Belt, a woman rolls a feathery ball of cotton between in her fingers, inspecting it for pests. In eastern Mississippi, an older woman, scissors in hand, kneels into a nest of leaves and uses a spade to harvest a sweet potato.

The year is 1910 and 14 percent of the nation’s farmers are Black Americans. Living before the times of widespread mechanization, their labor is physically intense and intimate with the earth. Purchased only two generations after emancipation, these plots of land represent the resilience and dignity of the communities they serve.

Since then, America’s agricultural landscape has changed, and not only where big machines have replaced hands and feet. Today, fewer than two percent of the nation’s farmers are African American, according to the 2017 USDA Census of Agriculture. What happened in the past 110 years are vital parts of our nation’s story in which seeds of innovation, regeneration, and communal stewardship are planted throughout.

The African Roots of Regenerative Agriculture

Conventional agriculture accounts for 23 percent of human-created greenhouse gas emissions. “Regenerative agriculture” is a set of practices for restoring soil health and maximizing the soil’s ability to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. Regenerative practices have gained popularity as more farmers recognize that dependence on pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and machinery robs the land of its natural organic matter.

But even members of the regenerative movement may not know that Black agriculturalists have long innovated in soil stewardship. In the 1890s, Dr. George Washington Carver developed a series of experiments proving that nitrogen-rich legume like peanuts could be used for more than a tasty spread, but also replenish soil when used in crop rotation. Centuries before Carver’s research, agriculturalists on the African continent sustained civilizations with regenerative techniques.

“Right now I’m working in a polyculture where we have blueberries, juneberries, apples, and medicinal herbs. This idea of growing a bunch of perennial crops together comes from different parts of sub-Saharan Africa,” says farmer Leah Penniman.

Penniman and her husband Jonah Vitale-Wolff founded the nonprofit Soul Fire Farm in 2010— an organization based in Grafton, New York, with a mission to end racism and injustice within the US food system.

“I’m also walking through rows of raised beds, which comes from Namibia’s Ovambo people who built mounds in order to control water flow and increase soil fertility,” says Penniman.

Penniman is part of a new generation of Black farmers using regenerative practices to pursue food justice and reverse climate change simultaneously. Soul Fire Farm provides immersive training to Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other farmers of color. It also advocates for policies that expand access to crop and technical insurance, non-GMO seeds, guarantees living wages for farmworkers, and increases markets for farmers of color.

Seldom-Told Stories

Part of the reason why organizations like Soul Fire farm teach new generations of Black farmers about their ancestral roots in agriculture is many people still don’t know about this part of our country’s history.

After emancipation, Jim Crow laws enabled states to lock up Black people for petty crimes and returned previously enslaved people to plantations at correctional facilities. In the share-cropping system, Black farmers rented land and equipment from white owners who received a share of the Black farmer’s harvest with interest. Unaffordable interest rates led to perpetual debt for Black farmers, many of whom tried and failed to pay off their debts with their own free labor.

The experiences of Black farmers received little attention until recently, with investigative pieces like Vann R. Newkirk II’s “The Great Land Robbery” published in The Atlantic in September 2019 and Penniman’s book, Farming While Black. These writings detail the history of discrimination against Black farmers, including by USDA officials who routinely denied loans, technical assistance, and disaster relief funds to Black Farmers, especially to those who were active in the civil rights work.

In 1995, Virginia farmer Dr. John Boyd Jr. founded the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) to help farmers hold on to their lands and increase access to public and private loans. In 1997, Boyd and 400 others successfully sued the USDA in the case Pigford v. Glickman, which confirmed that the USDA had turned a blind eye to hundreds of civil rights complaints filed by Black farmers, including Boyd, who had filed six complaints.

“All these farmers were coming out of the woodwork saying, ‘You think what happened to you is bad? You should hear my story!’” said Boyd in a 2019 interview with The Guardian. “I was just trying to save my farm. But then I saw this was a huge national issue.”

Pigford v. Glickman exposed the USDA but fell short of achieving justice. The government awarded $50,000 each to approximately 16,000 plaintiffs but there were many eligible farmers who didn’t know about the lawsuit’s application deadline. In 2010, the Obama administration re-opened the case and delivered more awards, but systemic racism and its effects still linger.

One of the NBFA’s newest projects is Regenerating Our Farms, which partners with organizations including the USDA, North Carolina State University, and Farmer’s Footprint to provide information and support to Black Farmers across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia for adopting new soil health practices. 

The Fight for Food Justice

The systemic denial of access to farming means that many African Americans and other people of color depend largely on retailers like grocery stores to get fresh foods, but too often retailers fail to show up in lower-income neighborhoods. Lack of access to healthy foods has had profound health effects, with 21.2 percent of Black households and 16.2 percent of Hispanic households experiencing food insecurity—the USDA’s measure for decreased access to healthy and varied food. Meanwhile, only 8.1 percent of white households are food insecure, according to 2018 USDA data.

Holes in food access go beyond hunger—a lack of fresh food exacerbates other health issues. According to 2019 CDC data, although obesity is a nationwide issue, Hispanic and Black adults are ten percent more likely be obese than white adults and experience diabetes at roughly double the rate of white adults.

Community organizer Karen Washington was first driven towards gardening as she sought to fix one of the trash-filled empty lots that had become a blight in her neighborhood.

“It was one of over 1,000 empty lots that were plaguing mostly low-income neighborhoods and neighbors of color in New York City,” Washington says. “And in 1988, with a group of people in the community, we were able to turn that empty lot into a community garden.”

In 2014, she co-founded Rise & Root Farm, an organization dedicated to promoting regenerative practices and increasing access to fresh produce. Washington considers it her responsibility to give Black farmers a space to recognize their role in the food supply. She co-founded Black Urban Growers, a group which brings Black farmers together to meet each other in an overwhelmingly white industry with annual conferences since 2009.

“In doing some research and looking at the census, finding out back in 2008, that of the 57,000 farmers in New York State, only 116 were Black. Fast forward that to now—57,000 farmers in New York State, still only 139 still are Black,” Washington says. “We have this conference every year where we bring people from all over this nation to come in and see a face, where it reflects who they are, and for them to have a buy-in in a system that for so long has negated them.”

The urban gardening and farming movement that has taken off in cities shaped by large Black communities like those in Chicago, Baltimore, and Newark, show that empowering people to grow their own food can be part of the solution.

“I grew up detached from the food movement, because as an African American, my relationship to food was always around the narrative of slavery,” says Washington, who is now one of Penniman’s mentors. “We’re now telling young Black and Brown people in urban and rural areas that their connection to food is powerful and that we do have a place in agriculture.”

How You Can Join The Fight For Food Justice

1. Support non-profit organizations that are investing in Black farmers like Soul Fire Farm, National Black Farmers Association, National Black Food and Justice Alliance, Black Urban Growers, and Rise and Root Farm. You can donate, volunteer time, and/or share their work on social media.

2. Call on your Congresspeople to support progressive legislation like the Justice For Black Farmers Act, Fairness for Farmworkers Act of 2019, Urban Agriculture Act of 2016, and the North American Agricultural Work Visa.

3. Buy from Black farmers at farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs.

4. When possible, buy products that are Food Justice Certified with the Agricultural Justice Project. This certification addresses fair wages for farmworkers, fair pricing for farmers, safe and healthy working conditions, the rights of indigenous people and children on farms.

My entire life I’ve watched as Washington politicians abandoned Appalachia and rural communities, sacrificing their wellbeing for cheap resources. I’ve watched as fossil fuel billionaires and the politicians they’ve bought out, a pack led by Kentucky’s own Senator Mitch McConnell, kept millions of Americans in poverty, enriching themselves at the expense of their constituents.

But I’ve also watched thousands of young people striking, sitting-in, and rallying across the country for a Green New Deal. I’ve watched as they demanded clean air to breathe and water to drink, the right to a living-wage job that doesn’t pollute our home or bodies. As I’ve watched, I’ve become convinced that another world is possible, a world in which we invest in our home and one another, a place where everyone has access to healthcare and a good job no matter the color of their skin or who they love. This is the world of a Green New Deal.

I didn’t learn about this vision at school, where climate change is considered a debatable phenomenon, but in my community. I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, “coal country.” My farmhouse was filled with the smells of coleslaw, soup beans, cornbread, and occasionally the latkes my mom brought down with her from Westchester, a mashup of cultures. We had a yellow kitchen and a barn in the back, a couple of cows for company, and a garden if time allowed. In the back room, my mother played the piano while my dad’s Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie floated from the stereo in the den.

We lived down the hill from my dad’s cattle farm, in the family for generations. Because of that, he never had to work in the mines. They were lucky: few families were left untouched, ravaged by black lung, contaminated water, or decimated land, swept up in the tidal wave of salvation by coal. Then, the coal industry packed up and fled, and I watched it, standing in the storm of inequality in its wake.

In September, I led hundreds of other young people to strike for climate justice and a Just Transition in front of the Louisville’s Metro Hall. All around the refrain of “Which Side Are You On?” sounded, a reminder of the United Mine Workers of the 1930s and their fight for a livable wage. In that moment, I knew Kentucky was ready for a Green New Deal, we just needed to remember a different part of our history to create it, the part before Mitch McConnell. I thought of my own parents, the future they had envisioned when I was born, and I started to think about the next ten years, the time we have left to radically shift our society to stay under two degrees Celsius of warming.

The Kentucky I’m fighting for under a Green New Deal is one that is returned to the people, free of the grasp held by exploitative industries. In my hometown, I see doctors administering free healthcare and educators providing job training for former miners. I see Lexington with a vast system of sustainable public transportation and affordable housing. In Western Kentucky, earning a living wage will no longer be a question for farmers using sustainable, regenerative ways of caring for the land. In Louisville, I can see the engineers maintaining locally powered energy grids that run not on coal but on solar and wind, I can see reparations in Black and Brown communities that have been dumping sites of pollution for far too long.

Above all, I see a Kentucky that works for everyone, and a future that I can believe in.

Lily Gardner is a 16-year-old leader in Sunrise Movement, a national movement of young people fighting to create good jobs and a livable future.

Fifty years after the moon landing, it’s easy to look back with awe on those days of great national will and collective use of our brightest minds. Some modern technologists think with similar combined brainpower and funding, we could use unprecedented “shoot-the-moon” technologies to solve climate change.

But others are looking to established solutions. Conservationists across the globe are striving to restore nature to combat climate change and its effects. Scientists and organizers are leading communities to understand the importance of overlooked ecosystems as they take on climate change in their own backyards.

Saving a State with Shellfish

Louisiana is disappearing. Historically, Louisiana had built levees to protect against the flooding Mississippi River. But more recently, modern development, including oil drilling, and hurricanes have torn apart this land and increased erosion. Louisiana has lost one million acres of wetlands and 2,000 square miles of coastal land in the last century, according to the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL).

CRCL, a New Orleans-based nonprofit, has been working to conserve and reform the state’s coastlines since 1988, before the state’s land-loss problem was even well-recognized.

One solution may lie on our dinner plates with oysters. That’s right—the high-priced seafood are housed in hard shells that naturally form walls under the water, which can help break strong waves during big storms. Over the years, overharvesting oysters has weakened these habitats’ ability to filter water and protect coastlines from storms. Oyster depletion has affected bodies of water from New York to Maryland to Louisiana.

In 2014, CRCL launched its oyster shell recycling program after finding that Louisiana, which produces one third of the nation’s oysters, does not get many of those shells back. Worse, most end up in landfills.

The innovative recycling program collects shells from 18 local restaurants, then volunteers bag up the shells and drop them back into the water to create habitats that young oysters can settle in. CRCL constructed its first half-mile reef in 2016.

Kat Loomis, habitat restoration coordinator at CRCL, is from Lafayette, Louisiana, a small city close to the Gulf Coast. She grew up with wetlands being a natural and beautiful part of her surroundings that she loved.

“When I started learning about land loss and what the state is dealing with it really gave me that push of, ‘Wow, this is my home.’ I really value the culture that surrounds our wetlands,” says Loomis. “It made me want to help and do my part to restore and sustain Louisiana for as long as we can.”

Researchers at Tulane University estimate the Louisiana coast is sinking over a third of an inch per year. Residents of Isle de Jean Charles, one of the state’s barrier islands, have already become the country’s first officially recognized climate refugees, receiving federal funding to relocate from their homes in 2016. Most of those residents belong to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe, which had been relocated there as part of the Indian Removal Act of the 1830s.

Loomis works closely with other community members to rebuild areas that rising seas and sinking land is quickly eliminating. Besides oyster restoration, she and the group conduct dune restoration, marsh grass plantings, and coastal forest tree planting.

Trees to Weather the Storm

Florida is often the punching bag for big storms because of its location in the path of hurricanes and its low-lying landscape—Florida has the second-lowest average elevation of all the states. Those two issues paired together can be a nasty combination.

When big storms cause high tides and flooding, salt water intrusion can harm freshwater wetlands and marshes. Enter mangrove trees, which have an odd name and even stranger look. Native on saltwater coasts around the world, these trees have visible root systems which often extend several feet above the
normal water level to the tree trunk.

These trees are multi-talented when it comes to our changing climate. Not only do they handle big storms—their roots literally hold the earth in place—but they also have an outsized impact in drawing down carbon and reversing climate change. According to Project Drawdown, the soil of mangrove forests in coastal wetlands can store five times as much carbon as tropical forests, and may hold 22 billion tons of carbon, making their protection crucial in the fight on climate change. And compared to the cost of implementing new solutions to the climate crisis, not polluting or destroying coastal wetlands is very inexpensive.

Kathy Worley is a biologist and the director of environmental science at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, an organization that works to protect that region’s environment, including through mangrove restoration. After 25 years in this role, Worley is heartened to see the changing political and community perspective on the preservation of the trees. When she began, people saw them as ugly parts of dirty swamps and a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

“People are realizing how much the environment really does for us. And that is the key because if it matters to the individuals and to the crowds, then it’s going to matter to the politicians who make the laws,” says Worley. “Now that we realize the value of mangroves, it’s time to invest in their future.”

Protect the Water, Protect Ourselves

In Palm Bay, Florida, the Marine Resources Council (MRC) aims to protect and restore the Indian River Lagoon, partly by using mangroves.

The MRC’s Mangrove Program collects mangrove propagules (like seeds) and grows 6,000 plants in its two greenhouses. Kate Zehnder, the MRC’s director of development, says community members love gathering propagules on the beach to be planted.

The MRC and volunteers plant the mangroves along the shores of the lagoon in an effort to establish native and resilient shorelines. Native shorelines have been found to be far more resilient during hurricanes, while also providing critical habitat to fish and bird species, and removing potentially harmful nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous from the water.

The lagoon faces similar problems to waterways across the country—its habitats for animal populations and plant species have been degraded due to pollution and development. While point-source contamination is often a contributor to water pollution, Zehnder says the landscaped areas around the lagoon and fertilizer-laden stormwater runoff from streets are among the biggest culprits.

“I grew up here, seeing the river which used to be a really big fishing area and you could get a lot of oysters and clams. Now you’re lucky if you can catch a fish,” says Cassidy Myers, a community member who also works on lagoon restoration. “That really struck a chord with me.”

Thanks to years of outreach and education, Zehnder and Myers say local communities are getting onboard with the steps it takes to fight erosion and pollution affecting local bodies of water.

“One thing that unites our community is the fight to protect the lagoon,” says Zehnder.

Resilience for the Future

From Louisiana to Florida and across the country, environmental conservationists look to what works in nature to see what people can adapt and use. In the face of climate change and for the health of our world, we cannot rely only on faraway “shoot-the-moon” technologies— in the natural world we can find tested models for climate resilience and carbon drawdown.

What You Can Do to Help

In hearing from these experts from areas hit hard by big storms, flooding, and rising seas, it’s easy to be inspired. Luckily there’s a lot you can do to protect waterways and coastal habitats no matter where you live.

• Avoid chemical fertilizers. If you must use them, avoid applying them in summer months when it’s rainier in most parts of the country. Nitrogen in fertilizer can contribute to algae blooms and kill plants and animals that keep water healthy.
• Look after your car and pets. Leaking chemicals and fecal matter get washed into storm drains and end up polluting coastal waters. Make sure your car is in good condition and that pet waste makes it to the trash can.
• Use a rain barrel. Besides collecting water for your garden, a rain barrel can mitigate stormwater runoff and then release the water into your yard to be absorbed when it’s not so saturated.
• Protect the trees. Kathy Worley says in the US, construction of roads and other features that re-route water is the biggest threat to mangrove habitats. Ask developers or local officials what they’re doing to conserve and protect habitats during construction.
• Ask your elected officials to pass climate legislation. Warming temperatures result in more frequent and intense storms that cause flooding and high winds, which are as bad for underwater habitats as they are for human ones on land.

By the time you read this, Americans will be only a few months away from electing their next president and the global community will have witnessed an unprecedented year. From a volatile and narrowly diffused nuclear conflict with Iran, to rampant fires in Australia, 2020 has delivered headline after headline that would be considered sensational if they weren’t true.

But the most globally important story to date is the novel coronavirus, which escalated into a historic global pandemic. Like the 2020 presidential election, the coronavirus pandemic is an unfolding story destined to shape our immediate future and for us at Green America, it’s safe to say that it has only heightened our sense of urgency.

While Green America focuses primarily on voting with our dollars, we know we need all Americans to vote in the electoral process too, and at every opportunity so that we can elect the courageous leadership we need in our national and local government. That’s why we talked to organizations involved in voter advocacy to find out how they’re getting people pumped for November third.

A YES Vote for the Climate

Since announcing his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement as one of his first acts in office, President
Trump has rolled back over 100 environmental laws including the landmark 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which reviews corporations’ environmental impacts, including projected greenhouse gas emissions. On March 26, amid the pandemic, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also suspended penalties against pollution violators, effectively giving companies the green light to pollute as much as they want.

These decisions spell disaster not only for the planet’s lands, seas, and atmosphere, but for humanity itself. Although 97 percent of climate scientists agree that human activities are fueling the climate crisis, the US still lacks aggressive, emission-reducing policies that would force corporations to stop doing business as usual.

Deregulations are likely to increase the disproportionate exposure of lower-income communities and people of color to air pollution as they are twice as likely as white Americans to live near an industrial facility, according to a 2015 report by
the Center for Effective Government.

“Doing something about climate change and environmental injustice really depends on following the science and listening to experts in the field and the administration’s engagement with the public about the impact of rollbacks like NEPA is almost nonexistent,” says Mark Antoniewicz, director of communication at Hip Hop Caucus.

Studies from the Pew Research Center show that in 2016, broad dislike for both candidates was a major contributing factor to low voter turn-out among registered voters. At the same time, Pew’s data shows that as of July 2019, millennials became the most populous generation group, meaning people ages 23-38 could flex significant political power in 2020.

But how do we engage groups with historically significant voting power but aren’t always prioritized during critical times of campaign outreach?

Powered by Music: Hip Hop Caucus’s Voting Movement

Hip Hop Caucus has a history of organizing and empowering people to vote. In 2004, the organization’s co-founder Rev. Lennox Yearwood partnered with music industry magnate Sean Combs’s “Vote or Die” campaign and in 2008, Hip Hop Caucus’s own “Respect My Vote” campaign broke a world record by registering 30,000 voters in a single day. In another crucial election year, Hip Hop Caucus has revived this campaign and it’s replete with luminaries in hip hop music.

“There was a time when hip hop music was perceived by some as being too ‘out there’ and not serious enough but now those tables have turned,” says Antoniewicz. “Now hip hop is everywhere and people are eager to utilize it, from congressional members to different presidents.”

Entertainers like radio personality Charlamagne tha God [sic], actress Keke Palmer, and rapper Vic Mensa have signed on to be 2020 “Respect My Vote” spokespeople.

Visitors to RespectMyVote.org can register to vote and find voting information for their state including what types of identification voters will need at the booth and guidelines for previously incarcerated people.

These efforts targeted to Black and Brown communities are essential to getting Washington to meaningfully address the issues that disproportionately affect these groups, such as environmental injustice and unfair labor. In many ways, COVID-19, like climate change, has exposed the ways a global, existential threat intensifies disparities that already exist. In April 2020, alarming reports emerged about the rates of COVID-19 deaths in Black communities. For instance, in Chicago, African Americans make up 30 percent of the population, but 70 percent of all COVID-19 deaths; in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a notoriously segregated city, African Americans account for 27 percent of the population, but approximately 50 percent of COVID-19 deaths, according to data from Milwaukee county.

In April, Wisconsin’s primary election proved the availability of mail-in ballots as a voter suppression issue. In spite of Milwaukee being Wisconsin’s largest city and having over 1,500 reported coronavirus cases, according to The Guardian, it closed most of its polling places due to a lack of available workers, which left only five precincts open. Voting day resulted in masses of people turning out to vote in cramped conditions that may have further spread the virus.

Fair Fight, led by Georgia politician Stacey Abrams, is one of the organizations calling out these covert forms of voter suppression. Fair Fight, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Brennan Center for Justice are leading campaigns to reform practices that disproportionately disenfranchise people of color from the process like discriminatory identification standards to early and absentee voting.

Kids Step Up

Today, some of the most influential activists are still in school and some aren’t even to voting age yet. Jamie Margolin is the 18-year-old co-founder of Zero Hour, a nonprofit with a mission to center diverse voices of youth in the climate change and justice conversations. Jonah Gottlieb is the 17-year-old co-founder of the National Children’s campaign, a non-partisan organization focused on making children a priority in political agendas and engaging youth in the civic process. Together, they’re leading “#Vote4OurFuture,” a campaign focused on increasing voter turn-out among first-time voters and empowering climate- and environmental justice-oriented voters.

Zero Hour will kick off the campaign by asking followers to share videos about why they’re excited to vote in 2020 using #Vote4OurFuture. It intended to go on a bus tour to cities experiencing widespread environmental injustices like Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Flint to help local organizers register people to vote.

“These cities were chosen because we want to reach communities that national organizations often don’t go to but also because these are communities are already doing great work,” says Margolin. “We’re there to help bring national attention, not to be saviors.”

The tour was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the National Children’s campaign, Jonah Gottlieb says he’s looking forward to helping people realize their political power.

“One of the things that I think sets our organization apart is that we give trainings on how to write legislation, work with members of Congress to edit it, and bring it to the floors of the House and the Senate,” says Gottlieb. “We want to show people that you don’t need a lobbyist to impact your government.” Antoniewicz, Margolin, and Gottlieb say their organizations are working to communicate the power of the whole civic process, not just the presidential election.

“It’s exciting to be coming of age politically and when we’ve seen such a resurgence in youth activism. I don’t really know any other ‘political normal’ because I was in eighth grade when Donald Trump started running for president,” says Gottlieb. “For me and many others in this movement, we understand that we need massive mobilization at every level against these forces that are fighting against our right to have a livable future and planet.”

When we started working on this issue, it was with the November election in mind. In February, no one knew the Green American team would spend most of our spring days separated and working from home. The intent of developing this feature for our summer issue was to make sure that environmental justice issues was top-of-mind as people headed to legislators’ town halls and to the polls in the summer and fall.

Then came COVID-19. The pandemic quickly revealed itself as an environmental justice issue. Then on March 26, the stories we planned became more relevant than ever when the Environmental Protection Agency issued a pass to polluters. The EPA stated it would not penalize companies that break environmental laws—as long as the companies claim the pandemic as the reason. This will affect not just businesses, but people. Communities like those in University Park, Los Angeles, and Native people in North Dakota are pushing back against dirty energy in their backyards. They will only face a tougher fight without any support from EPA regulation.

Meanwhile, other groups, like Soul Fire Farm and Rise and Root Farm, have already been fighting some of the injustices that create deadly health outcomes for the people in their communities. And now these same injustices mean a higher infection and death rate for people of color with COVID-19.

These stories, though about people in precarious circumstances, give me great hope. These warriors press forward no matter what—they won’t give up the fight for their communities as they take on the climate crisis.

As we publish this issue, we are all still in work-from-home mode with the editorial team spread across five states. Come November, we will have an election, and it’s clearer than ever that we must fight for and beside those who stand for environmental justice. And we must vote for those who cannot. Like Lily Gardner, the 16-year old climate activist, who in her essay “What a Green New Deal Would Mean for Kentucky,” says:

“I’ve become convinced that another world is possible, a world in which we invest in our home and one another, a place where everyone has access to healthcare and a good job no matter the color of their skin or who they love.”

The warming climate is already affecting families from the oil fields of North Dakota to the rising waters of the Gulf Coast. But climate warriors are reclaiming spaces and fighting for our future.

The popular wartime solution for supplementing food rations was embraced by Eleanor Roosevelt, and now environmental experts say it's time to bring victory gardens back.

By Dan Nosowitz, May 20, 2020

There's no roadmap for fighting climate change, but bringing back a few old traditions might be a way for all of us to do our part. Green America, a nonprofit focused on ethical consumerism, honed in on the victory garden when looking for ways to help more people get actively involved in a solution to global warming. Victory gardens were especially popular during World War I and World War II when people needed to supplement rations by growing their own food. And we need this concept again, says Green America, because now what we need to ration most is our contributions to climate change.

“When we were at war, we wanted people to grow fruits and vegetables at home so there would be more available for the troops overseas,” says Todd Larsen of Green America. He says that today, victory gardens offer us a way to “grow food for ourselves and our families, and also be part of the climate solution.”

HELEN NORMAN

The Victory Garden Impact

Tens of millions of people planted victory gardens during both World Wars, including Eleanor Roosevelt, who planted one on the lawn of the White House. During World War II, these gardens provided about 40 percent of the country’s fruits and vegetables. According to Green America, if we could produce that much again in our home gardens, we could collectively make a positive impact on the environment.

That’s because growing your own food means less needs to be produced on big farms (which usually isn't as sustainable as home gardening can be) and then transported to you. And when you plant and care for your garden sustainably, it can also help to protect soil, support pollinators, and reduce your carbon footprint. It might not seem like you would make much difference in the world by planting your own tomatoes and beans, but multiply it by millions of similar gardens across the country and the world, and it can all add up to a significant change, like victory gardens before.

Keeping Carbon in the Soil

Carbon dioxide is one of the major contributors to the greenhouse effect, and it's released into the air when we burn fossil fuels in  cars, planes, and power plants. The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the more it traps heat from the sun and helps raise the Earth’s temperature. But there are natural methods here on the ground to remove that carbon dioxide from the air. It's called carbon sequestration, which basically means taking that carbon dioxide from the air and storing it where it can’t contribute to the greenhouse effect.

In what scientists call the carbon cycle, plants are like carbon dioxide vacuum cleaners, sucking it out of the air and storing it in their tissues. When plants die, they turn into organic matter in the soil, which holds onto that stored carbon dioxide with the help of billions of fungi, bacteria, and other tiny creatures that live there. Green America believes that climate victory gardens can be a major contributor to this natural carbon capturing process.

“If you do no-till gardening in your yard, so you're not digging up the soil year after year, it actually does have a big impact in terms of sequestering carbon in the soil,” says Larsen. That’s because when you disturb soil, it causes organic matter to break down faster and release more carbon dioxide back into the air. Mulching and composting also boost your soil’s ability to store carbon; plus, you won't need to water as much or use chemicals for fertilizer or weed killer.

ANDREAS TRAUTTMANSDORFF 

It Gives Wildlife a Home

With millions of climate victory gardens across the country, beneficial wildlife like pollinators would have more of the food and habitat they need to survive. “We have been taught all these years that we don't want wildlife in the garden, that bugs are bad. But plants are the foundation of any wildlife habitat,” says David Mizejewski, a naturalist at the National Wildlife Federation and author of Attracting Birds, Bees, and Other Backyard Wildlife. He points out that roughly nine out of ten insects in your garden aren’t pests at all. Instead, they might be butterflies, whose caterpillars provide essential food for birds, or ladybugs, which eat the pests that do show up.

Plus, many fruits and veggies you’d grow in your garden, including zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant, actually produce more for you when bees and other bugs pollinate their flowers. These insects then help feed birds and many other creatures. Climate victory gardens can play an essential part in supporting this entire ecosystem. And when you have a healthy ecosystem, you can rely on fewer pesticides, fertilizers, and other outside inputs that all create carbon emissions when produced.

Harvesting tomatoes and other produce from your own backyard helps lower your carbon footprint.

MARTY BALDWIN

A Source of Healthy, Hyper-Local Food 

Environmental benefits aside, it's also nice to sample the fruits of your labors! If you grow a tomato plant, you can walk into your backyard and pick one to eat instead of driving to the grocery store (which releases carbon dioxide and other harmful greenhouse gases). Tomatoes at the supermarket might've come from a farm far away (which requires fuel to get to you). Transportation accounts for about 11 percent of food’s total emissions, so you can cut that to zero by growing it yourself, as well as cutting other carbon creators that large farms use, such as synthetic fertilizers and big tractors to plant and harvest.

Larson points out that there are psychological benefits as well. “We find that people who are really involved in gardening, especially the kind where you're really taking care of the earth, makes folks pretty attentive when they go to the supermarket,” he says. If you know exactly what it takes to grow a radish, you might begin to value radishes at the store differently. You might decide to use parts of that radish that many would throw away (the greens make a great pesto). And if you can’t grow it yourself, you might choose to buy organic or local if you have the choice. All these decisions help to reduce your carbon footprint, which is the name of the game.

The victory garden concept started with World War I food rationing, progressed to producing mass amounts of food during World War II, and now can help us all fight against climate change. And like we saw during those wars, growing even just a small part of what you eat can make a difference when we’re all in this together. Time to get planting!

Because you understand the fundamentals of growing food, pollinator habitats, and healthy soils, you can take it to the next level to ensure your garden is part of the climate solution.  

It's easy. If you have a garden, you're likely already using some of the Climate Victory Garden practices.

Our #1 tip for more seasoned gardeners is to think critically about the ways you can protect your soil and make decisions that reduce emissions beyond the boundary of your garden. These two approaches to Climate Victory Gardening help your garden soil store carbon and encourage best practices for the climate. These resources will help you do both. 

Green America has partnered with the Environmental Investigation Agency to bring you a new way to take action for people and the planet: support the growing movement to eliminate harmful super pollutants called HFCs from our supermarkets.

The food in our supermarkets is kept cool with substances called refrigerants. The most common refrigerants are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), super pollutants that leak out and devastate our climate.

HFCs have thousands of times the warming capacity of CO2, and they are the fastest growing greenhouse gas.

The U.S. supermarket sector has lagged behind other developed countries in cooling without super pollutant HFCs, but a few supermarkets are using sustainable HFC-free alternatives.

In the map below, you can find stores that are climate-friendly and see which stores are still using climate-damaging gases. Don’t see a climate-friendly store near you? Urge for more HFC-free supermarkets!

This map is undergoing continuous updates based on publicly available information or data shared specifically with EIA.

Each of us has our own garden vision, and this is the perfect place to start your garden journey.

Take time to think about your dream garden. What do you see? Consider drawing or writing about it (this will help you later on!).

Set garden goals and keep these in mind throughout the rest of your gardening process—maybe your top priority is growing great tomatoes to save money on groceries, getting your kids outside to grow food, or creating a habitat for pollinators.

Garden planning is essential for success and ensures you're making the right decisions for your Climate Victory Garden to have the greatest impact on the climate and your local ecosystems. It’s one of the most important and involved parts of the gardening process, especially when you’re considering carbon capture.

These beginner gardener resources can be viewed as a sort of timeline: choose a location; test and prepare you soil; figure out what, how, and when to grow; and maintain your garden throughout the year.

Read the beginner gardener toolkit for more about the 5 steps to start a garden.

The month of May opened with a great headline in Reuters and similar ones in other media outlets: “Climate Activists Claim Win as JPMorgan Sets Timetable for New Lead Director” – just weeks before the JPMorgan Chase big shareholder meeting on May 19, 2020.

Pressure is building from shareholders and climate activists and it’s getting results –starting this summer, Raymond will no longer serve as the lead independent director on the bank’s board. The question now is whether he will serve at all on the board. Shareholder and public pressure is increasing to vote Raymond off the board entirely.

Raymond, former CEO of ExxonMobil and former board member of the American Petroleum Institute, is a long-standing climate change denier. He has led massive disinformation campaigns for decades to refute the science on climate change, even when it came from ExxonMobil scientists.

In response to criticism of the bank’s massive financing of fossil fuels, and a vocal campaign to oust Raymond, the bank’s demotion of Raymond’s role is both significant and long overdue. Given Raymond’s influence and unconscionable record, his removal from the board is essential if the bank is to successfully reverse course on its fossil fuel financing. A January 2020 report leaked from the bank even affirmed that “We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened”.

For decades, Raymond has used his power to oppose science-backed evidence of climate change. It’s no wonder that his 30-plus years on the JPMorgan board has resulted in the bank being the largest funder of fossil fuels in the world by a huge 36% lead. In the last three years, JPMorgan Chase has plowed $268 billion into intensifying the climate emergency.

JPMorgan Chase is the worst bank on earth for the climate; it can only change course by removing its leading climate denier from the board.

Fortunately, three New York City pension funds, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, and the Pennsylvania State Treasurer -- all major institutional investors -- have stated they will vote against Raymond’s continuation on the JPMorgan Chase board.

If you own JPMorgan stock, this month you too can cast your votes to reflect your values for people and the planet. Shareholders have a crucial opportunity to vote whether or not Lee Raymond continues on the board.

The shareholder meeting will be held virtually on May 19th at 10:00am EST.

You can vote your proxy ballot in advance (check the deadlines in your proxy materials) or during the virtual meeting through the meeting website. As a shareholder, if you have questions about accessing the virtual meeting, email corporate.secretary@jpmchase.com or call (212) 270-6000 by May 15, 2020.

Not sure how to read your proxy statement? Use this graphic to help you vote your shares.

Make your vote count!

Everyone, including beginner gardeners, can grow food, pollinator habitats, and healthy soils, whether you have a huge plot of land or live in a tiny urban high rise. Together, it's the collective action of Climate Victory Gardeners across the country (and world!) that has the potential to move the dial and be part of the climate solution.

It's easy. If you have a garden, you're likely already using some of the Climate Victory Garden practices. (If you're brand new to gardening, check out these five steps to starting a garden.)

Our #1 tip for beginner gardeners is to have fun and not take the process too seriously. Gardening is like a big experiment, and even the most seasoned gardeners have lots of opportunities to learn from their mistakes. These resources will get you started and set up for success.

Is your business starting to consider sustainability in your practices? Do you want to appeal to the ever-growing mass of conscious consumers? With over 30 years of experience, the Green Business Network knows what it takes to be a truly green business and a sustainability audit is a good place to start.

Getting Started

Green businesses are driven by a mission to make the world a better place. They tie together profitability, social responsibility, and environmental sustainability in their business practices. This includes everything from worker safety, clean ingredients, to their water and carbon footprints. Green businesses challenge the status quo by modeling new practices in supply chain management, community development, and even customer service. 

The first thing you need to do to begin the process of becoming a green business is to analyze your current practices.

Running a Sustainability Audit

Every industry has different metrics for social and environmental responsibility. A paint company will need to consider the health risk of minerals in their formula, while a honey company will need to focus on the welfare of their bees. Your business will have tailored needs, as well.

Regardless of your industry, you can start your green business journey by answering these basic questions. It’s okay if you don’t have answers for every single one just yet. As your sustainability practices develop, you can answer these again and see how much you’ve grown. These questions are general to help you get started.

Social Justice

• What is your social mission or purpose? What impact do you want your business to create for your community?
• How does your business meet the needs of its workers and ensure they are treated well?
• If you employ workers overseas, how are you ensuring livable wages, safety, and health in the workplace?
• How does your workplace promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace and throughout the supply chain?
• How does your company positively impact the community?
• In what ways can you improve transparency in your supply chain?

Sustainability

• Does your business have the infrastructure, capacity, and governance to maintain a comprehensive sustainability program? If not, how can you build one?
• Consider your supply chain. What is your business doing to minimize waste during the production of your product(s)?
• Consider the life cycle of your products. How are you minimizing the footprint of your product—do you have a take-back program, a recycling partner, or something else?
• How are you minimizing the impact of your office, production, and/or service facility?

Keep in mind, these questions do not replace comprehensive standards. As your business improves on its social and environmental commitments, you can dive into even greener standards specific to your industry. The Green Business Network’s How to Be a Sustainable Business series is a good place to start—no matter what your industry, there is a place for your business with us.

Growing Your Green Business

Becoming a socially and environmentally responsible business is an ongoing process. As your business evolves and grows, you will adopt new practices. Creating an internal sustainability committee to maintain your efforts can help ensure your company does not get off track during growth.

You can seek external verification for your efforts, too. An example of this is a certification from a trusted, independent third party. Certifications also have the bonus of being recognizable to consumers, helping you reach new markets. Conscious consumers are more likely to be loyal to your brand when your business aligns with their values, too.

Mission-driven businesses are leaders in the ever-growing green economy. Your business can tap into this market by starting your green business journey. Demonstrating a strong and sincere commitment to social and environmental responsibility is good for both people, the planet, and the legacy of your business.

Explore more rigorous social and environmental standards for business in the How to Be a Sustainable Business series here and learn about becoming a certified Green Business Network member here.

You might have heard that your garden can be a part of the climate solution, but how does it really work? Climate Victory Gardens are all about making decisions in your garden that help it sequester carbon—that is, pull carbon out of the air and store it underground—and helps you offset emissions from other parts of the food system.

Why focus on climate, isn't this just a garden? 

The research is out there and it’s clear that we need to act aggressively on the climate crisis. Some reports say that we only have 12 years to meaningfully address the climate crisis. It’s also said that we have less than 60 years of agricultural topsoil left to grow food. At the same time, our food system is a big part of the problem, emitting between one quarter and one third of the world’s greenhouse gases. 

We know that we need to slow the pollution we’re emitting, but there’s already too much carbon dioxide in the air, so we also need a way to drawdown carbon if we’re going to slow the warming of our atmosphere. 

The good news: research shows that agriculture and gardening are a great way to do both—pull carbon out of the air and slow emissions. This intersection of food and climate is a place where we can exercise our decision-making power and engage in meaningful action, every time we eat or work in the garden.

Green America is working with large farms and companies to do this as well, but change at the large scale takes time, which is why we’re asking gardeners to be trail blazers in their own backyards to get this idea out into the world ahead of the curve, before climate-positive food is something that’s widely available at the grocery store.

There’s two ways to think about climate solutions in our Climate Victory Gardens. 

The first is maximizing soil protection within our gardens, because this is where we can capture carbon by pulling it out of the air and storing it in plants and underground. 

The second way is all about minimizing climate impacts beyond the boundaries of our gardens and making decisions that help reduce emissions. For example, if you don’t buy chemical fertilizers, you’re reducing pollution and emissions that would have come from producing and transporting that fertilizer from the factory to the store. 

Climate Victory Gardening practices help gardeners make decisions that work towards these two goals. 

How do plants and soils capture carbon? 

This is something they do naturally, and it’s up to gardeners to create the right conditions. 

Plant grow using photosynthesis, a process in which they harness the sun’s energy, water, and carbon dioxide to create food in the form of sugars or carbohydrates (base word: carbon). This food helps plants grow and build cells, as well as feed life in the soil that provides them with nutrients (through a symbiotic relationship, meaning they help each other out). The plants grow to produce healthy food and release oxygen as a byproduct, which is what makes our plant habitable for life.

A single teaspoon of healthy soil has billions of microorganisms. This soil life includes everything from earthworms to beneficial bacteria and fungi; these are the workhorses we’re harnessing to pull carbon out of the air. 

Today, industrial agriculture and conventional gardening methods treat soil badly, often with synthetic chemicals that harm life in the soil, which then releases carbon into the air—turning farms and gardens into a source of carbon emissions. But, under good management, soil and these microorganisms can hold huge amounts of carbon. We just have to grow food the right way. 

Rethinking carbon  

Carbon is something we often think of as bad, because we associate it with our changing climate. But, it’s the basic building block for all life. In the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, carbon creates a greenhouse effect that heats our planet, but plants use carbon to create cells to grow and feed microorganisms in the soil that support them.  

It’s the carbon that goes into the soil through plants that has the biggest potential for change. Those billions of microorganisms? They represent a quarter of Earth’s biodiversity, and this is where we want to get the carbon, because it’s more likely to stay underground and it helps our gardens grow. 

You don’t have to be a scientist to know this; many gardeners are well acquainted with carbon in healthy soils, but might recognize it as organic matter, the crumbly texture, or its rich, earthy smell. Soil health is integral both as a climate solution and a successful garden.  

When we grow food at home in a regenerative manner; we purchase less food that has traveled across the country, we keep methane-producing organic materials out of landfills with composting, we increase the water holding capacity of our soil to decrease flooding and runoff, and most importantly we rebuild our soil health bringing back its carbon sequestering potential. 

Since the US has become the latest epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, business-as-usual has had no choice but to come to a quieting halt. Between March and April, a staggering 30.3 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits and retail sales in March fell by almost 9 percent. Meanwhile, many Americans are adapting to a new reality of staying at home  for the foreseeable future, while others continue to work on the frontlines of the response.

In the midst of an uncertain economy, we’re spotlighting some of the businesses in our Green Business Network whose creativity and resilience are giving us hope. 

Dhana Inc.

The circular-minded fashion brand Dhana Inc.[m] has been a Green Business Network member for nine years and provides both youth and adult apparel. Dhana has also been recognized as a Best for the World Honoree every year since 2016 and is a complete brand that now includes circular clothing. 

 In April, the company began selling face masks designed with zero waste and circularity in mind.

Research has shown that while masks may not prevent wearers from getting infected, they are useful in stopping the spread of germs to others. Dhana is meeting the rising demand with Batik masks--Batik being a dyeing technique that is traditional in Indonesia and India. Dhana is producing the masks in Indonesia and Columbus, Ohio.

AZ Eco Designs

AZ Eco Designs [m] is a sustainable product design studio in San Francisco, California. The company sells clothing, furniture, and artworks all made from all sorts of scrappy materials like cooking oil cans, denim, tires, computer parts and water pipes. The company’s founder, Aguida Zanol has a long career in making new creations out of recycled materials and held leadership positions at some of the first sustainable design organizations in Brazil.

“With all that’s going on, I’m designing more sustainable products from excess materials we collected before  quarantine like cardboard boxes” says Zanol. “I’m transforming the boxes with the goal of getting them to zero waste. So, one box can be the start of a shoe rack and the left-overs of it, a necklace or lamp.” Zanol is also planning to host virtual workshops in the near future.

Dunitz & Co

Dunitz & Company [m], based in Hollywood, CA, specializes in fair-trade jewelry. Dunitz elevates the work of artisans and supports organizations that serve Guatemalan communities where the company’s beadwork is crafted, like the Hospitalito Atitlan which is currently screening patients and distributing coronavirus information in the city of Santiago Atitlán.

Dunitz & Company is also a member of the Museum Store Association, which selects unique nonprofit business products to be sold in museum gift shops. Founder Nancy Dunitz compiled a list of over 50 museums that are offering virtual tours for those staying at home.

“I figure everyone needs more things to occupy their time at home, and I thought this would be a way to link and support many institutions that support me during better times,” said Dunitz. “'I’ve been able to compile this list by researching online, inquiring from my customers and watching my Facebook feed.”

Takoma Park Silver Spring Co-op

In a Washington, DC, suburb, TPSS [m] is a neighborhood co-op offering locally sourced produce and other groceries. For one lifetime payment of $100, shoppers can become part owners of the store and enjoy benefits like discounts, have a voice in co-op governance, and become eligible to join the Interior Federal Credit Union.

In March, the store reduced its hours and asked customers to only come in once a week, then moved to an online shopping system with curbside pickup. General manager Mike Houston says the store will continue operating this way indefinitely.

“We had no online order platform before March 23, so we had a lot of work to do make sure things function properly,” says Houston. “We’ve gotten a lot of support from the community and people have gotten used to ordering online.”

Green America is continuing to publicize the creative and crucial changes that green businesses are making, including advocacy for small green businesses. If you are a business owner, please sign the American Sustainable Business Council petition to Congress to provide meaningful support to small businesses in respect to healthcare, disaster relief, and expanded unemployment benefits at greenamerica.org/savesmallbusiness.

Up next: 3 Green Businesses Getting Creative During COVID-19

Shareholders Should be Heard, Not Muzzled

The full article from ThinkAdvisor, April 13, 2020, is available at here.

Introduction:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is attempting to bar many investors from pushing corporations to address major issues, including climate change, lobbying and election spending transparency, human rights abuses and discrimination. This would be a huge setback not just for those shareholders, but all of us who benefit from the progress they help to bring about.

For resources on shareholder action visit:

Basics of Shareholder Action

How to Read a Proxy Ballot

Sample Shareholder Resolutions in 2020

Empty shelves at the grocery store have inspired many shoppers to turn to gardening. But, some garden companies were caught off-guard by the surprise spike in interest for garden supplies and may be experiencing shortages as well. Whether you’re looking for materials for your first-ever pandemic garden or a seasoned gardener looking for your usual spring garden supplies, you can still find what you need to grow good food.

Seeds

First, we suggest calling or emailing your local garden store—be patient, they likely have reduced hours and staffing and are dealing with many challenges. Even if their doors are closed right now, if they have seeds on the shelves, they’ll probably figure out a way to sell them to you and offer curbside pick-up, delivery, or shipping. This goes for all the gardening supplies listed below—although shipping heavier items might not be the best idea.

You can also look to small businesses that grow and sell seeds. The great thing about local seeds is that they’re likely more adapted to the weather, soils, and precipitation in your region. Buying local garden supplies helps small businesses in need during economically hard times, and these seeds will help your garden be more resistant to a changing climate and growing seasons.

You may also find seeds at a local seed library. Or consider asking neighbors and garden groups on social media. Remember to follow all CDC guidelines when sharing resources.

Soils

You may not need to buy soil if you’re lucky enough to have a yard. If you’re unsure of the quality of your soil, you may want to amend with a rich compost. If you don’t already compost at home, get started now so you have soil later this season and for next year. If possible, find a local source of compost or soil; farms and garden centers may have these key garden supplies or know where you can find them locally. 

In many states, hardware stores are still open, and these are a treasure trove of garden supplies. If you’re concerned about entering the store, consider calling ahead to see if they’ll offer curbside pickup for soil or any of the garden supplies mentioned here. 

Soils can also be found at some larger supermarkets that have outdoor and gardening sections. Next time you’re grocery shopping, explore these aisles to see what they have. 

Or support green businesses like Devine Gardens for rich vermicompost, delivered to your door.

Containers and Building Materials 

If you’re growing indoors or starting seeds indoors to transplant outside when it’s warmer, look no farther than your recycling bin for gardening supplies. Old plastic yogurt containers and milk cartons make great planters. 

Larger containers for porches and balconies can be repurposed from old buckets, mixing bowls, coolers, or anything that can withstand the weight of soil can be used. (We suggest doing a deep Pinterest DIY on repurposed garden containers). Anytime you’re repurposing something, don’t forget to poke holes in the bottom for drainage.

If you’re interested in building garden beds and find that the building kits are sold out, remember that you can garden in the ground without building up physical beds. But, if you feel that a built bed is the best option for your space, look for nontoxic lumber or repurposed wood that’s lived another life (as a fence, for example).

Some online sources like the Gardener’s Supply Company have all the container options you might need no matter where you’re planting.

Tools

First, we suggest looking through what you have. Many of us have old forgotten tools or items that can be repurposed for the garden. For small-scale gardening, you can even use large spoons from the kitchen. 

If you need something more heavy duty, consider your local garden company, hardware store, ask local gardeners on social media, or consider tool share programs. Some small businesses like Green Heron Tools are still shipping garden supplies. 

Looking for more gardening tips during the time of COVID-19? Check out our Climate Victory Gardening facebook group, where gardeners from all walks of life ask questions, share advice, and celebrate the successes of their fellow gardeners. 

ThinkAdvisor features all the investment news, in-depth analysis, market data and tools financial advisors need to grow their businesses and their bottom line.

T-Mobile continues to lead the telecom industry in adopting clean energy. The company announced that its recent partnership with Otter Creek Wind Farm has achieved commercial operation and is expected to generate more than 504,100 MWh of clean energy every year. This placed T-Mobile at 95 percent clean energy.

At the same time, the company has recently finalized its merger with Sprint. T-Mobile has committed to update its target date for 100 percent clean energy to account for its newly expanded footprint. Previously, Sprint lagged on renewables before late 2019, when it announced a new clean energy project which would reportedly supply 30 percent of its energy use. 

The victory gardening movement of the 1940s was a time for grassroots collective action—when households across the country grew incredible amounts of food. It was also a time when war was used to justify extreme xenophobia and oppression of non-white Americans.

Green America’s Climate Victory Gardening campaign strives to reclaim the good from this movement, but we can’t do that without addressing the hurt and racism that Japanese Americans experienced directly related to the WWII victory gardens during this terrible time in our country’s history. 

Racism Leads to the Incarceration of Japanese Americans 

While many point to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor as the start of xenophobia towards Japanese Americans, racism and injustice existed long before WWII. 

First-generation Japanese immigrants were barred from becoming citizens and faced discrimination in labor markets and land ownership from the moment they arrived in the United States. Many settled in the states along the West Coast and farming was the only occupation available to them. In 1934, one third of Los Angeles’s Japanese American workforce farmed and gardened. 

Thanks to generations of farming knowledge from Japan, these workers were wildly successful at growing food in the American west. Second-generation Japanese Americans were able to become citizens and began owning small farms and they quickly became an important part of US agriculture. Data from the period show that Japanese American farms were more productive and profitable than other farms. In 1940, they produced more than 10 percent of California’s food by value even though they held less than four percent of farmlands.

In 1941, the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor, leading to the United States’ formal entry into WWII. The existing racism towards Japanese Americans was intensified by fear and war propaganda. The next year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which called for the forceful removal of over 120,000 Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese descent from the west coast to concentration camps farther inland. 

Two thirds of those in camps were American citizens. There were no formal charges against these prisoners and no significant convictions of any Japanese Americans for espionage during the entire war. This was incarceration due to ethnicity alone. 

Injustice towards Japanese Americans was compounded by the action of white-owned corporate agribusinesses, which saw the opportunity to take over these family farms. Lobbying from industrial agriculture with “competing economic interests” targeted and forcibly removed successful Japanese American growers from their farmlands. 

We understand that terms like “concentration camp” and “incarceration” might not match words you’ve heard used in the past, like “internment” and “relocation.” If you’re wondering about our word choice this article is for you.

Japanese Gardens in Incarceration Camps

Japanese Americans lost their homes, their businesses, their rights, and in some cases their lives. They were moved to incarceration camps that were little more than barren lands with barracks surrounded by guard towers and barbed wire. In fact, the land chosen for the camps was intentionally poor, because the government hoped that their new inmates would use their farming expertise to improve the land with enormous agricultural projects. The camps were isolated; sickness, beatings, and death were everyday experiences. 

This is not the scene that comes to mind when most Americans think of victory gardens, but these camps were home to thousands of individual gardens that played an important role somewhere between horticultural therapy and survival. Gardens in the camps served cultural and health purposes, acted as a buffer against psychological trauma, and represented an attempt to re-create community in these harsh new environments. There were beautiful ornamental gardens and gardens that grew traditional Japanese vegetables to supplement terrible meals in the camps. 

Camp gardens were also a form of resistance. Many of the inmates faced complex feelings around American patriotism, the injustices of Executive Order 9066, and betrayal by their white neighbors. Gardens were an opportunity to physically rebuild their community but, for some, they were also considered subversive symbols of non-compliance, resistance against confinement, and even appropriation of the War Relocation Authority’s land. Gardening often required illegal acts to acquire materials and became highly politicized in some of the camps.

Government Promotes Household Victory Gardens 

Outside the camps, the US government aggressively promoted victory gardening at the household level. Fearing food shortages, the need for such a huge civilian mobilization was often attributed to farmers becoming soldiers, war allies relying on US production, and feeding troops. Gardening was marketed as family fun, healthy recreation, and patriotic.

What few knew then and even fewer know now, is that rationing programs and food shortages were largely due to the incarceration of many of the United States’ most productive farmers. When Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their land, food supplies plummeted and prices skyrocketed. In 1942, Japanese American-owned farms were expected to provide half of the canning tomatoes and 95% of all fresh snap beans for the war effort. They were also the primary growers of strawberries for civilian consumption.

The colorful, upbeat, whitewashed victory gardening posters do nothing to hint at the over 6,100 farms that were taken from Japanese Americans (estimated to be worth over $1.3b today). They do nothing to show the forced labor of German prisoners of war and Japanese internees, and they ignore the fact that the government had to import thousands of Mexican workers to keep the United States food supply stable.

Reclaiming Victory Gardens to Face Today’s Crises

What do we do with this deeply troubling history?

First, we can acknowledge that this history is not behind us. Stigma of the incarceration camps remains, and reparations fall short. The US didn’t apologize or offer restitution to impacted Japanese Americans until 1988—too little too late. In general, the US doesn’t have a great track record for delivering reparations to groups who’ve been forced from their lands and into forced labor, including enslaved Africans and indigenous peoples. Racism persists in the face of climate and global health crises, as marginalized communities are hit hardest and—again—as anti-Asian racism spreads, but this time amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

We can also reclaim what was good about the victory gardening movement of the 1940s, when 20 million people took action to feed their families and communities in uncertain times. We can again tap into therapeutic potential of gardening. And, this time, we can garden in a way that’s good for the planet (unlike the chemical-heavy methods used during the 1940s). 

The victory garden movement was a top-down model, with the government driving action. Today, we’re seeing incredible amounts of grassroots action around growing food that directly opposes the systems that reinforce oppression, the industrialization of our food system, and centralization of power. Across the country, people are building Climate Victory Gardens that bring communities together and provide nourishing food to people who live in food-insecure areas—those experiencing food apartheid and facing racism.

We need everyone to be part of the climate solution and easing the impacts of the pandemic. Gardens have a role in the future we’re striving to create; racism does not.

Here are some great organizations addressing anti-Asian backlash today:

• Asian Americans Advancing Justice
• Asian Pacific Environmental Network
• Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council and Chinese for Affirmative Action have launched an incident report for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders experiencing microaggressions, racial profiling, hate incidents, and hate violence

Here are some organizations working to ensure gardening is available to all: 

• The Ron Finley Project
• Soul Fire Farm

It’s important that Americans work together to make sustainable gardening and agriculture a viable activity for all groups and communities—one that honors the wisdom and connection to the land of diverse peoples.