Last Saturday at the Practical Farmers of Iowa conference, Wendy Johnson, a Climate Land Leader and co-owner of Joia Food Farm, gave a “lightning round” talk on “Five Things to Know About Agriculture and Climate Change Plus a Bonus One.” Here’s what Wendy wants you to know: 1. Fossil fuel reduction is necessary to mitigate…

If you had just minutes to talk about climate change and agriculture, what are 5 points you’d want to convey? We recently asked Climate Land Leaders that question. Here’s Jackie Armstrong’s response. Jackie and her husband, Gary Levinson, steward 80 acres near St. Ansgar, Iowa. Jackie is a retired lawyer, is active in Citizens Climate…

Gaia Vince, the author of Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World, is an award-winning science writer and broadcaster; an honorary senior research fellow at the Anthropocene Institute at University College London. She is not technically a scientist; however, she has a very broad knowledge of the subject and is lacking depth in…

What is Climate Land Leaders’ niche? What is the organization’s value? How could it be improved? Through a survey, group discussions and one-on-one calls, staffer Sarah Hunt recently gathered extensive feedback from our cohort members on these questions and more. Here’s what she found out. Niche, Focus and Value How does our organization differ from…

What an oasis an urban lot can be when we give up our attachment to turf grass and uniformity. Photographer, videographer, author and farmland owner Helen Gunderson shows us what is possible. Through the years, she has documented the plants and animals with whom she shares her home in Ames, Iowa. For more on Helen,…

What happens when a Lutheran, a lawyer, a lobbyist, a public radio producer and a hog breeder walk into a meeting? They join the Climate Land Leaders Board of Directors. Welcome to our inaugural Board Members Jackie Armstrong, Kate Moos, Meg Nielsen, Julie Ristau and Jane Shey! A woman of faith, Meg Nielsen is owner…

With this post, we start a series on the talented Climate Land Leaders who are artists. Climate Land Leader Ruth Rabinowitz brings her awe for nature and an eye for detail to her photography work. But first…more about Ruth. She stewards farms in Iowa and South Dakota and has just built a new home on…

Climate Land Leaders are looking forward to gathering in East Central Minnesota this weekend for the second of our fall retreats (read about our first fall retreat in Northeast Iowa here). Over the course of the weekend the cohort will spend time on forested land and three farms, one of which is in year 3…

At Climate Land Leaders, we try to make sense of our lives, agriculture, our land and our time through films, poems, podcasts, photos — and especially books. Here’s a Climate Land Leaders book list, with contributions from Mary Damm, Teresa Opheim, Jane Shey, Sylvia Spalding, Lee Tesdell and Paula Westmoreland. Several of these titles have…

On August 5th, Carol and Peg Bouska and their sisters Ann Novak and Sally McCoy (in spirit) treated Climate Land Leaders to a tour of their amazing conservation projects. Here are their remarks from the day. Our ancestors bought the first plots of this farm in 1903. They continued to add onto this land, purchasing other…