This episode is my third interview with Dr. Laura Lengnick about her book, Resilient Agriculture. In my blogspot for the second interview, at the request of Dr. Lengnick, I clarified that the discussion in the second interview was recorded in June of 2024 before the impact of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina toward the end of September, 2024, and was not a response to that event. However, Dr. Lengnick agreed that at a time which allowed for recovery and healing, some reflection about Resilient Agriculture in light of the event of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina was important and appropriate. Particularly important for that reflection includes Dr. Lengnick's understanding of the concept of "bouncing forward" rather than "bouncing back" or "building back better."

That time, nearly one year after the Hurricane Helene event, has come. So I welcome back Dr. Laura Lengnick.


Dr. Lengnick is the author of Resilient Agriculture: 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

In this interview a reference was made to effort called Regenerative Agriculture. Dr. Lengnick sees that effort as providing tools for Resilient Agriculture, but believes that that the work she and others are doing with Resilient Agriculture goes beyond Regenerative Agriculture. You can learn more about Regenerative Agriculture here:

commonground.org

kissthegroundmovie.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.