Episode 30: Climate Consciousness with Liz Carlisle

In the final episode of their climate consciousness series, Marti and Todd welcome Liz Carlisle, associate professor at UC Santa Barbara and author of "Healing Grounds: Climate Justice and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming." They explore the essential relationship between human consciousness and agriculture through the lens of indigenous wisdom and regenerative farming practices. Carlisle shares insights learned from women farmers and indigenous leaders about the importance of putting "roots in the ground all year round" - both literally in farming practices and metaphorically in how we approach our relationship with the land. The conversation delves into how regenerative agriculture isn't just about carbon sequestration, but about healing our relationship with the earth and each other through practices that give back to the land rather than simply taking from it. The hosts and guest discuss the potential for regional food systems to scale out (rather than up) regenerative practices, and how everyone - even those not directly involved in farming - can participate in healing our relationship with the planet. The episode concludes with the new "Potentialities" segment, replacing the previous "Conscious Rant," where Todd shares observations from a regenerating forest in Costa Rica as a metaphor for how consciousness in leadership can create conditions for sustainable transformation.

Guest: Liz Carlisle

Liz Carlisle is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming. A native of Montana, she first became passionate about agriculture while working as an aide to organic farmer and U.S. Senator Jon Tester. This experience launched her into a decade of research and writing collaborations with farmers in her home state, leading to three influential books on regenerative farming and agroecology.

Her works include "Lentil Underground" (2015), "Grain by Grain" (2019, co-authored with Bob Quinn), and most recently "Healing Grounds: Climate Justice and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming" (2022). Through these books and her academic work, Carlisle explores the intersection of sustainable agriculture, climate justice, and indigenous wisdom. Her research focuses on supporting new entry farmers, incentivizing soil health practices, and developing food and farm policies that promote regenerative agricultural systems.

A frequent contributor to both academic journals and popular media outlets, Carlisle brings a unique perspective to agricultural studies, holding a PhD in Geography from UC Berkeley and a BA in Folklore and Mythology from Harvard University. Before her career in academia and writing, she spent several years touring rural America as a country singer, an experience that deepened her connection to agricultural communities and rural life. Her work consistently emphasizes the importance of indigenous leadership in soil stewardship and the potential for regenerative agriculture to address both climate change and social justice issues.

Liz’s website

Series: Climate Consciousness

What role can leaders play in healing our relationship with the planet? Can one person make a difference? What is happening around the globe that brings us hope? Join Marti and Todd for this series on climate consciousness featuring scientists, thought leaders, farmers, and more.

Timeline

[00:00:00] - Introduction to episode and guest Liz Carlisle

[00:01:16] - Marti’s introduction

[00:02:05] - Discussion of exchange principles in natural systems

[00:05:05] - Introduction of Liz Carlisle and her background

[00:07:03] - Liz introduces her teachers and mentors

[00:09:14] - Discussion of soil stewardship practices and indigenous wisdom

[00:13:54] - Exploration of modern culture's separation from land

[00:14:24] - Discussion of roots and carbon sequestration

[00:20:11] - Examination of perennial plants and their teachings

[00:23:40] - Introduction of regenerative agriculture concepts

[00:26:07] - Todd's reflection on extraction vs. exchange in relationships

[00:31:13] - Discussion of the term "regeneration" and its meanings

[00:42:20] - Addressing scale and regional food systems

[00:46:53] - How non-farmers can participate in healing the land

[00:49:09] - Introduction of new segment "Potentialities"

[00:51:36] - Potentialities: Rain Making - Lessons from a Regenerating Forest (Todd)

[00:56:18] - Takeaways from Marti, Todd, and Liz

[01:00:00] - Closing music and credits

Quotes

“The closer you are to Pachamama, the better off you are.” — don Manuel Quispe

“Once we remember our true nature, we will remember to live our lives as an inextricable part of Nature." — Marti Spiegelman

“Everything in life is dependent on the principle of exchange.” — Marti Spiegelman

“Without exchange, nothing flows. Nothing grows. Systems don't interact. Life in fact just stops. So just getting close to the land isn't enough.” — Marti Spiegelman

“We have to learn from the land. We can't keep going about our business making independent decisions. Pachamama will teach us season by season what to give her so she can give us what we need in return, but only in ways that benefit the entire system.” — Marti Spiegelman

“It can be a little discouraging when conversations about regenerative farming or soil health seem to kind of stop at the carbon molecule rather than all of the many things it is connected to.” — Liz Carlisle

“This depth of being in relationship with land—the level of observation and kind of intergenerational knowledge sharing that moves regeneration beyond these kind of individual practices that you might think of as kind of a checklist to something more like the kind of sense of obligation that you might feel to a family member—that this is a relationship that will go on and on and on for generations into the future.” — Liz Carlisle

“it's not about getting the most out of the land now, or maximizing this crop. It really is you and the land in relationship forever and imagining the flourishing of your own human family as deeply connected to the flourishing of all of these other beings that you're in relationship with from the tiniest soil microbe to the plant that you can see and touch and eat.” — Liz Carlisle

“The carbon that comes through the plant roots is actually five times more likely to stay down in the soil and associate with minerals. So the ecologists just keep coming back to this theme of, ‘roots in the ground all year round.’ If we really want to rebalance climate through land-based practices, that's what we need to do.” — Liz Carlsle

“Whether you're talking about slavery or . . . the immigrant labor force . . . or indigenous communities being pushed off of their land, there's this tension between an ecology that requires rooting and a history that has been all about uprooting.” — Liz Carlisle

“Food is a way of maintaining that memory of connection to land.” — Liz Carlisle

“Reconsider who you are and what your roots are. See how that changes your sense of the earth and the land, and what you buy to eat and if you grow anything, how you grow it.” — Marti Spiegelman

“Plants are very powerful beings.” — Liz Carlisle

“There's a lot that can be learned from the ways that plants create the possibility for other life. They create conditions in which other lives can flourish.” — Liz Carlisle

“A lot of times the conversation can get boiled down to just measuring carbon in the soil. But I like to come back to that bigger principle of farming in a way that gives back to land. That really orients us to the larger set of relationships.” — Liz Carlisle

“A really good farm is basically mimicking the natural world and natural relationships between plants and animals, and people and soil microbes.” — Liz Carlsile

“Is it possible to create spaces where the sum becomes more than just all of the parts put together? Where there's actually energy created and new possibilities that exist because these people are in relationship—not just because they're sitting in a room together, but that they're in relationship.” — Todd Hoskins

“Everything in a conscious living system is investing in everything else in the system in order to produce orders of magnitude more benefit for every part of the system, and the extra energy to keep doing that over and over and over.” — Marti Spiegelman

“What Nature is doing is constantly creating the next new cycle.” — Marti Spiegelman

“History and ecology are linked, I also see [regenerative agriculture] as repair of all the harm to people through these oppressive, extractive agricultural systems. And that a lot of that repair has to do with reconnecting people to land that was taken from them, or resources that were taken from them.” — Liz Carlisle

“There are big corners of the regenerative agriculture conversation that have kind of disconnected from history. And as a result, I think have become pretty misguided in focusing more exclusively on carbon or a set of techniques or technologies without really understanding the root causes of like why we have an extractive agriculture in the first place.” — Liz Carlisle

"I just keep coming back to going deep with our regenerative processes and what would it mean to really center food and land in our collective life as a society. That's what I think we need to do - move to a more reciprocal relationship rather than extractive. But what that means is actually taking seriously where our food comes from and recognizing that's a fundamental part of how we live." — Liz Carlisle

"What if we really invested in the relationships in our agriculture or in our leadership in our workplace? Might that actually create more abundance, rather than this scarcity mindset of being efficient - or really what that means is operating miserably with whatever time and energy and resources we have? Instead of this, we could imagine a sharing mindset that creates collective abundance." — Liz Carlisle

"There are really serious limitations to the degree to which a truly regenerative agriculture can be scaled up. But I think it can absolutely be scaled out - which is to say that we can have many regional food systems where there's a balance between the eco-region, the people who live there, and the food system." — Liz Carlisle

“Diversity builds resilience. Just as this forest thrives through its varied species, each playing its unique role in water retention and distribution, our solutions must embrace complexity and interconnection.” — Todd Hoskins

“When leaders operate from a state of presence and deep listening—full consciousness rather than reactivity or rigid control—we create conditions where creativity and resilience naturally emerge.” — Todd Hoskins

“Our most powerful actions arise not from imposing our will, but from aligning ourselves with Life. ” — Todd Hoskins

“There are so many parallels when you think about what makes sense for a plant or the soil, and what makes sense for people." — Liz Carlisle