Thoughts on Carlisle Chapter 2

 This chapter focuses on the loss of a closed-loop farm. Black farmers who have historically been systematically shut out of government programs and were greatly impacted by Jim Crow have developed some of the most complicated regenerative techniques in recent history. 

“Big Ag” has just recently discovered that planting only one crop, or monocropping, kills the soil, while Black farmers in the South have known this for over a century. Black farmers practiced livestock integration to naturally fertilize the land, polycultures, which are a variety of crops to keep the soil full of nutrients, and resourcefulness by transforming land into productive ecosystems sans the expensive chemical inputs. For these farmers, soil sustainability was a survival strategy rather than a goal. With dead soil comes dead independence. 

The most gut-wrenching part of this chapter is her critique of how we have modernized farming. The transition into industrial agriculture is not just hurting the planet, but it is also being used as a tool for racial dispossession. Farming became more capital-intensive, which forced Black farmers off their land. The deep-rooted communal knowledge was traded for shallow-rooted cornfields. Soil exhaustion goes hand-in-hand with the displacement and exhaustion of black bodies. 

    Books on regenerative agriculture typically feature a checklist for buying cover crop seeds and to stop tilling. However, the social structure within a farm is just as important as the biology of the first. A healthy ecosystem cannot occur when it is built on a foundation of exclusion and theft. We need to change who gets to own the farm rather than just how we farm. We have to look at land trusts and reparative justice in order to heal the land. A high output, high stress, and low diversity environment is hurtful and we should instead go back toward a “Homestead” model that prizes community and resilience. The innovations that we are looking for are not in a laboratory but are in the stories of black farmers pushed off of their land in the 20th century.