Didi Pershouse
Didi Pershouse is Founder and Lead Educator for Land & Leadership Initiative; Coordinator, Researcher and Writer for Seed Media Project; and is an author and soil sponge strategist. She is also the founder of the Center for Sustainable Medicine and developed a practice and theoretical framework for systems-based ecological medicine—to restore health to people as well as the environmental and social systems around them. After 22 years of clinical work with patients, Pershouse now travels widely in North America and Europe as a speaker, teacher, and consultant.
Pershouse is a skilled facilitator, who brings people together into effective working groups with common goals: improving soil health, alternatives to capitalism, public health, food and water security, and regional resilience through simple changes in land management. Her participatory workshops engage farmers and ranchers, policy makers, investors, and scientists in living-systems thinking and deep listening, to allow for emergent strategies. In addition, Pershouse has developed a practice and theoretical framework for systems-based ecological medicine—restoring health to people as well as the social and ecological systems around them.
She is a Planning Commissioner for her town, a member of the Vermont State-appointed Payment For Ecosystem Services and Soil Health Working Group and is on the board of directors of the Soil Carbon Coalition and the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition. She led a successful effort to conserve the Zebedee Headwaters Wetlands while serving as a Vermont Conservation Commissioner. She is currently working on projects with the UN-FAO Farmer Field School program; the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming Initiative (APCNF) in India (involving over 800,000 farmers); and the No Regrets Initiative.
Didi was also a participant in the Global Earth Repair Conference, when she joined our panel discussion Ecosystem Restoration for Climate hosted by Tim Sexauer.
Location: Vermont, USA
Books: Tce, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities, Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function. She is a lead author for the “Future Directions” chapter of the UN-FAO Technical Manual on Soil Organic Carbon Management, and a contributing author for Health in the Anthropocene.
Websites:
1) https://www.didipershouse.com
2) https://www.landandleadership.org/
3) https://soilcarboncoalition.org
4) http://www.rehydratecalifornia.org
Video 1: Water
Video 2: Ecology of Care
