The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities
Introductory Workshop based on the book by Didi Pershouse. September 18th, 5:30 PM EDT
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Online course: September 18th at 5:30 PM EDT (New York, USA)
I spent 9 years of weekends writing The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Power of Human and Microbial Communities (between 2006 and 2015). Readers tell me it is more relevant than ever, and I agree. Although I’d focus even more on water and a bit less on carbon if I were to rewrite it today.
The health of humans and ecosystems are declining even more rapidly than when I wrote it—a decline driven primarily by the extractive quest for profits. Most frightening to me are the complex neurological issues that are increasingly affecting our ability to think clearly about the issues we face. Yet it doesn’t have to be this way. It really doesn’t. There are places in the world that are addressing many of these issues together, with great success. It’s time to bring the promise and perspective of the Ecology of Care back into focus, worldwide.
Because of this, I’ve decided to offer chapters of the book on Substack, and to start teaching a series of international live discussion courses related to the topic—so we can use a living-systems approach to finding effective intervention points where each of us lives and works.
This introductory workshop will be in the form of a discussion based on the Introduction to the book, which you can find on my Substack page.
Your Instructor
Didi Pershouse is well known as an innovative international educator both in-person and online. She is the founder of the Land and Leadership Initiative. Her facilitator's guide Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function, is used in over 60 countries.
She became deeply involved in the intersection of food systems and health systems while providing rural health care for two decades at The Center for Sustainable Medicine, and wrote The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities.
Currently she is writing a field training manual for the UN-FAO Farmer Field School Program and the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming Initiative in India, involving over 800,000 smallholder farmers. She was a contributing author to The Climate Emergency: How Africa Can Survive and Thrive; Climate Change and Creation Care; and Health in the Anthropocene. She was one of five speakers at the United Nations-FAO World Soil Day in 2017.
She serves on the Planning Commission for her town, is a board supervisor for the White River Natural Resources Conservation District, and is on the board of directors of the Soil Carbon Coalition and the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition. While serving on the state appointed Payment for Ecosystem Services and Soil Health Working Group, she helped to reorient the program back to its public roots. She led a successful effort to conserve the Zebedee Headwaters Wetland while serving as a Vermont Conservation Commissioner.