Resilient Agriculture Part 2 with Dr. Laura Lengnick PGE 104

As I did in my spoken intro to this episode, I want to begin this blogspot with a clarification. The interviews that have made the two parts and episodes with Dr. Lengnick were done in early June. You may know that beginning September 24 the rain from Hurricane Helene began to come through the area where I live, which is in Black Mountain, North Carolina, just east of Asheville, North Carolina. The primary impact of that event occurred on the night of September 26-27. It was devastating and in many places it was catastrophic. I posted Part 1 on September 24, the day the rain began. It is just now that I am able to post Part 2. My original intention was to post this episode a week after posting Part 1.

Because both of these interviews on Resilient Agriculture directly speak to the issues that bear on the impact of Hurricane Helene, Dr. Lengnick wanted to make sure that you, my listeners, understood that these interview were made 3 months prior to the impact of the hurricane and not as a response to it.

However, some reflection in light of the ideas and principles of Resilient Agriculture upon the event of Hurricane Helene needs be provided. Dr. Lengnick has graciously agree, when the time is more appropriate, to return for a third interview, especially to speak about her understanding of the idea of bouncing forward rather than bouncing back. We will look forward to that interview.

In this episode, Laura talks about her experiences in having be active in promoting Resilient Agriculture for a while now, she speaks about the importance of stories to the promotion of Resilient Agriculture and tells us some stories, and she provides a very helpful list of things we non-agricultural folks can do to participate with and in Resilient Agriculture.

Dr. Lengnick is the author of Resilient Agriculture: Expanded and Updated Second Edition: Cultivating Foods Systems for a Changing Climate. This book will be the basis for these interviews.

Laura is the founder and principal of Cultivating Resilience which works with organizations of all kinds to integrate resilience thinking into assessment, operations and strategic planning. Trained as a soil scientist, Laura has 30 years of experience as a researcher, policymaker, educator, activist, and farmer. She has broad federal policy expertise gained through work as a U.S. Senate staffer, a USDA-ARS researcher, and a lobbyist advocating for sustainable agriculture in the U.S. Congress and was a lead author of the 2013 United States Department of Agriculture’s report, Climate Change and Agriculture in the United States: Effects and Adaptation.

You can learn more about Cultivating Resilience and Laura here:

cultivatingresilience.com

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.