Resilience in Times of Uncertainty

The Quivira Coalition, Holistic Management International, and the American Grassfed Association collaborate each year to convene ranchers, farmers, conservationists, land managers, scientists, medical professionals, nutritionists, students, educators, and others to share knowledge, build community, and create a culture of resilience and regeneration. This year, in response to impacts from the Coronavirus pandemic and the call for meaningful action towards racial justice, we will host an online, month-long series of plenary presentations, roundtable discussions, and practical workshops—October 26 through November 20—to collectively imagine and define a path for Resilience in Times of Uncertainty.

In January 2020, the world fundamentally changed, and we all now navigate our lives knowing that the food, agriculture, and healthcare systems we previously engaged in do not have the flexibility to bounce back from rapid and dramatic shifts. We recognize the challenges this presents for food production and land stewardship. For some farmers and ranchers, these shifts have flooded direct-to-consumer markets. For others, paths to selling what they produce evaporated overnight. Some can’t hire the labor they need, while others have had to lay off long-time and valued employees in order to stay afloat. Some have more time to focus on building soil and monitoring ecological change, while others can no longer afford the best laid plans for transition to regenerative methods.

While many would like to think we will return to some state that existed before 2020, we believe that we have entered a changed world where we must rise to the challenge of planning and acting for resilience. This is the focus of 2020 REGENERATE.

This year, we will adapt many key elements of previous years’ conferences to a virtual space in order to support the health and safety of everyone participating. In addition to the information exchange, networking, and inspiration this event has provided in the past, we invite you, as a member of the REGENERATE community, to increase capacity and strengthen relationships for resilience in agriculture and land stewardship.

Many of us inherently understand that changes to our planet’s systems and climate are inextricably connected to how we experience the world as humans—socially, economically, environmentally, and politically. Yet changing how we think and act as ecological collaborators involves challenging and intentional work, and may not come easily. What happens when we work together with others who don’t think or behave in the same ways we do? How does collaboration fundamentally shift the way we do things? How do we set intentions, individually and collectively, about the world we want to live in? How do we practice adaptability and learn to plan for the unpredictable?

REGENERATE 2020 will explore these questions, thought processes, and solutions, offering a diversity of virtual events, an abundance of accessible information, and ample opportunity for conversations to regenerate mind, body, soil, and spirit.

Holistic Management International

Holistic Management International is an environmental and educational non-profit that helps communities grow and thrive by educating family farmers and ranchers and pastoralists in regenerative agricultural practices that empower them to strengthen their businesses, produce healthier food, improve local wildlife habitats and protect the environment.

American Grassfed
Association

The American Grassfed Association is a national multi-species organization dedicated to protecting and promoting grassfed producers and grassfed products through national communication, education, research and marketing efforts.