Compost, pesticides, native plants, and pollinators! Explore these topics and see how they support the restorative actions we can take together to draw down carbon into the Earth’s soils.
WHY HEALTHY SOIL
As mothers we want good health for all children. Raising healthy children requires healthy food. Raising healthy food requires healthy plants. Healthy plants grow in healthy soil. And healthy soil restores climate health by storing more carbon and rebuilding nutrient and water cycles. Healthy soil is full of microbial life and beneficial fungi. When it is healthy, it is like a sponge and can store both water and carbon.
Restoring the health of soil is a powerful tool to combat climate change. By relying on natural cycles– many of which Indigenous and Black farmers have recognized and understood for centuries – our yards, gardens, forests, parks, farms, and wetlands absorb carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere and store it underground. We must support these cycles to mitigate the rise in global temperatures.
Learn More by Watching: The Soil Story by Kiss the Ground
WHO WE ARE
The Healthy Soil, Livable Future Action Group promotes actions that individuals and communities can take to mitigate climate change by harnessing Earth’s natural cycles. We are part of a climate movement that promotes healthy soil everywhere by preserving forests and wetlands, maintaining and planting trees, restoring native plants and pollinator pathways, reducing pesticide use, supporting food production in community gardens, and composting.
Our actions include educating the public about the role of healthy soils in carbon drawdown and healthy food, providing support to soil activities in local Mothers Out Front chapters, and mobilizing to support soil-related legislation. We ground our actions in four organizing principles: nurturing healthy soil; acting in support of environmental justice; improving the health of people and ecosystems; promoting the growing and broader distribution of healthy food.
Painting by Janet Powers, member of Healthy Soil, Livable Future
OUR CHALLENGE
Building our grassroots power is both a challenge and a necessity. Just as the fossil fuel industry is rich, powerful, and fierce in protecting its business interests, so, too, are industrial agriculture, pesticide manufacturers and lawn care companies. By learning and acting together, we can improve air quality, spur healthy food production and integrate nature into our constructed environments. Together we will build a movement that is equal to this challenge.
JOIN OUR TEAM
LEARN & ACT
Engaging in actions expands curiosity, while learning strengthens the effectiveness of our actions. Learn, then act, then learn some more. Act at home, with your family, and as a community. Acting together in accordance with nature, we can heal our communities, ameliorate climate change, and create a more just and healthy food system. Check out these resources to see how you can make a difference.
Act at Home
There’s so much we can do in our own backyards! Discover how you can become part of the climate change solution right at home.
Act in our Communities
Organizing together in our communities is powerful. Look at these opportunities for collective action that can have powerful results.
Advocate at the Statehouse
We can advocate for change at the Statehouse and with our elected representatives for beneficial legislation. By working with allies, our voice has even more of an impact!
Action Guides
When we restore soil health, we can grow healthier food and sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Learn about the benefits of regenerative agriculture!
Compost: A Climate Change Solution
Explore how composting food scraps reduces methane gas emissions from landfills, builds nutrient-rich soil, and sequesters carbon.
Change Lawns to Living Landscapes
Learn how shrinking turf lawns and growing native plants can increase biodiversity and support the microbial life that regenerates the soil.
It is time to grow without glyphosate! Let’s keep poisons off of our lawns, away from our food, and out of our communities.
Gather ideas for community composting campaigns & projects. Discover how Mothers Out Front chapters are advocating for community composting.
Books
Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown
A North Dakota farmer describes transitioning his farm to regenerative agriculture using cover crops, no-till, and managed livestock grazing.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
A Native American botanist looks at the natural world through the combined lenses of science and indigenous knowledge.
Websites
Awakening people to the possibilities of regeneration.
Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA)
For people in Massachusetts who care about food, where it comes from, and how it’s grown.
Conserving and promoting New England’s native plants.
Films
Biggest Little Farm, https://www.biggestlittlefarmmovie.com
Kiss the Ground, https://kissthegroundmovie.com
Dirt Rich, http://www.dirtrichthemovie.com