Was Milton Whitney a villain or an early advocate of regenerate farming? Milton Whitney is the closest thing soil science history has to a villain. Not only did he have an abrasive personality and get in serious conflicts with most of his colleagues, but he’s gone down in infamy for making the following statement in a 1909 USDA bulletin titled Soils of the United States : “The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset the Nation possesses. It is the one resource that ca

The OEFFA conference is only six weeks away! For this first week of 2026, I’d like to highlight some of the new and exciting things that are coming up—soon!   First of all, I am giving the keynote, “Together for Organic,” for the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association’s 47th annual conference , “Finding Common Ground,” on February 14 in Newark, Ohio. I’ll be highlighting the past, present, and future of how we can bring people from diverse backgrounds together to build an

If we could all live like this, would it solve all the world's problems? Imagine for a moment that we could actually, in the next decade, meet all of our environmental goals. It won’t realistically happen, but let’s say that all of our electricity came from renewable sources, all our cars were electric, and somehow we’d figured out how to sustainably source and recycle the rare metals to make electric cars, solar panels, and wind turbines in a way that wasn’t fueling environm

Scooter the cat understands stewardship now--after I tamed him! One of my favorite lectures that I attended at the Acres U.S.A. conference was Keith Berns’s session on “Stewminion: A Biblical Approach to Environmentalism.” Keith coined the word “stewminion” by combining “stewardship” and “dominion.”   As Keith pointed out, a lot of people get uncomfortable with the word “dominion.” “Some people think dominion means we can do whatever we want to creation because we are suppose