Earth Day 2025

By Mary K
April 20, 2021
Edited April 27, 2021

It’s awe-inspiring to look back and realize that some of the shifts we enjoy now were spurred by the aftermath of the Coronavirus pandemic. In 2020 the US experienced a massive transfer of wealth to help bolster the crumbling infrastructure of the food system that had become a fast-running commodity system of convenience, chronic illness and dependence. A few months after the virus impacted every part of the globe, billions of dollars were allocated for emergency food recovery, and were promptly sucked up by huge agribusiness interests. Within a month of receiving taxpayer aid, those same industries were declaring it would not be enough to maintain profit margins as needed. 

Things seemed pretty dire by the Spring of 2021. Following the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris there was a surge of hope, and of global crisis to address. A flurry of farm bills were passed, and efforts towards reparations were being mentioned in progressive cities. The long running H.R. 40 Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act was brought before the House again… but people weren’t waiting for “Hope” to audaciously arrive. Many of us, including folks in CGC, were working diligently towards the future we enjoy now.  

Corn and soybean fields have now been largely replaced by small scale diverse operations, involving soil remediation using regional native plant species. Regenerative techniques adapted wherever possible from Indigenous food ways, as shared by folks bio-regionally, and from the work of George Washington Carver of the Tuskegee Institute. Community-to-community acts of mutual survival have become steps taken towards building new careful trust. Large swaths of formerly endangered lands have been healing more quickly than anyone could have imagined, now that re-wilding has become one of many US strategies to address climate change, integrating Indigenous wisdom and science.

Returning whole regions to Tribal stewardship had proven a wise move, and the land responded. At last, there was a deep review of words, they were chosen more carefully, new agreements were established, and honest plans and arrangements were made between communities. A kind of harmony many thought impossible was reached in a small dotted pattern over the country, striking up places of focus around land and people healing, that reverberated in waves.

There was of course the fire season of 2021, and the subsequent hurricane season, followed by a bitter winter. This time there were far more people prepared to weather long power outages, with stores of healthier foods saved than had been in generations in some parts. In the long quiet spaces between aid, people all over came together in the spirit of mutual aid to help one another through tough times. Seeds were saved, stories were told that winter, and the following spring of 2022 substantial changes began rolling out in earnest everywhere. Climate change HAD to be addressed, at whatever level possible.

Freeing the CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) animals was determined to be one of the biggest moves we could collectively make towards reducing pollution, and helping a just transition move forward substantially. 

By Spring there were millions of Americans facing eviction, millions already homeless and floating wherever they could, in cars, with families… people were faced with having to share space, and for a lot of white communities it was hard. People everywhere were disillusioned by the system that had de-housed them, they were ready to try something new. Some of these included people who rallied to start gardens in 2020 and in a couple of years had accumulated a diverse set of skills, and cultivated a deep curiosity and desire to live more in harmony with the land. When the move was suggested to disperse millions of livestock to new farm families and cooperatives, as a humane alternative to another massive killing of pigs, beef and chickens in Congress that year, it was accepted. Billions of dollars were diverted from propping up CAFOs and feed corn operations, to healing the lands that had taken generations of small family farms out of operation… and returned it to the generations struggling now.

With our collective ingenuity, we thrived. No-chem farming became the norm. The use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers was heavily penalized by 2023, and in 2024 it was formally banned in 15 of the 50 states. Funds from these penalties were turned around to continue funding the just transition of labor and funding bio-regional food ways development. Mutually beneficial inventions, programs, processes and products were rewarded with investments in the form of grants and community determined subsidies.

Schools increasingly incorporated food cultivation as part of their systems of education. It became known as a universal truth, a shared goal, access to good food is essential to our collective survival. Practical skills were elevated, and experienced teachers were encouraged to help youth learn more about how to survive and adapt in our changing world. Students with heavy school debts were given opportunities to quickly pay them off by adapting their degree experience to ever-presenting system-change-challenges. Many of these turned into good living-wage jobs. 

The summers of revolt against racism and exploitation had gone farther than prior generations’ efforts to overcome such injustice. We collectively addressed white backlash that had sucked the progress back into business-as-usual in each wave of movements preceding us. Social media, though a double-edged sword, offered enough relentless awareness, and bioregional omni-directional broadcast capability that we were able to consciously move forward together, while resource sharing. It was impossible to ignore it, or pretend like it wasn’t a blatant reality that had become a focal point in the fight of our age. People by and large wanted to be seen as good people. We collectively continued to experience levels of climate-related trauma and multiplied threats to health and well being. Mutual aid efforts continued. Open conversations, in small groups of 3-4 white people dotting the nation learned how to process the nightmares of Europe that ancestors carried over to the colonies, then the United States… careful, tangible steps forward were made, towards living together in good ways. It didn’t seem like much, didn’t feel like enough sometimes, but it was important, and through the times that outcomes were uncertain, moments of compassion and real communication carried us through.

In cities, community garden managers were given stipends. Nutrient dense foods were made available to all, for free, at scale, subsidized, gifted, prepared, celebrated with. Food innovations were rewarded based on whole-systems standards of measurements. Government once again invested in long term strategies, as they had in the tech boom, for Apple and Microsoft. In this iteration, they were held to account by the generations of the most impacted, and minimal mineral use was rewarded above former disposable models of commerce and product development. For our collective food ways, this meant that more lands were free to heal, more waterways were left longer without pesticide interference. Automated farm planning and smart-tech solutions were put on pause in lieu of real jobs for people who needed and wanted to work in our new, diverse, organic, healthy food reality.

Farm incubators were formed. Black, Indigenous and People of Color were increasingly given access to land to grow food in 2022 and by 2025 ownership had grown by 25 percent nationally, on track to continue growing. Paired with growing groups of volunteers who had decided to stop devoting their life energy to jobs that were part of the problem, feeling a growing sense of dismay and sometimes disgust at the constant push to return to their pre pandemic commutes, deadlines, profit margins… their jobs that exploit others, that poisoned the water and depleted the land. People were beginning to see that moments of peace and enjoyment existed all around them, wherever they were at. We no longer had to count on jet planes to get us to little flashes of paradise, we were growing it out of the char of the old brittle system.

This all served in the global movement to sequester gigatons of carbon by 2050.

Managed grazing 16.34 gigaton of reduced CO2
Saving the next generation $735.3 Billion

Recognizing women as farmers, rather than farm assistants, saved 2.06 gigatons of carbon, saving $87.6 billion.

Regenerative Ag resulted in 23.15 gigatons of CO2 reduced
$1.93 trillion saved

Reducing and reimagining fertilizer 1.81 gigatons reduced
$102.3 billion saved

Tree intercropping 17.2 gigatons CO2 saved
$22.1 billion saved

We built lasting community-to-community relationships. Latinx, or Indigenous Immigrants, farmworkers and builders who had relocated, were a big part of the just transition effort. Families were reunited. Communities advocated for accountable treatment of all peoples, and after a year or two of intentional righting of historic wrongs, millions of people were shifting into lives more balanced with the natural rhythms of the Earth.

In just five years, we went from global pandemic to moving closer and closer to consciously reconnecting humans to food, living, community and interdependence. We were coming to the realization more  and more each year that when we honor the abundance of Earth and learn to share it, we all win.

Reference:
For Gigatons of Carbon Saved
"Project Drawdown." https://drawdown.org/.