Today we are so excited to be having a conversation about one of our favorite topics when it comes to tackling the climate crisis and other issues like biodiversity loss, soil health and even food justice - and that would be regenerative agriculture.

Jesse Smith is the Director of Land Stewardship for White Buffalo Land Trust and has been working for the past decade to develop a resilient food economy in California’s Central Coastal region. He’s an agricultural producer with a background in communication and industrial design, and has devoted his life to agricultural system design and community development to achieve evolutionary change within our food economy and ecology.

In addition to his role as Director of Land Stewardship at WBLT, he is a Trustee at the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens, a Trustee at Santa Barbara Middle School, a member of the Santa Barbara Food Action Network, and part of the Green America, Carbon Farming Innovation Network since 2017. After almost a decade of working in regenerative agriculture, ecological education, community leadership, and international consulting, Jesse is at the inflection point in his career. 

Having firmly found a grounded footing in his work and community, he now has an opportunity to catalyze systemic change with the 1,000 acre Center for Regenerative Agriculture at Jalama Canyon Ranch as a powerful platform. As an individual with a multicultural and multidisciplinary background, he is a leader with a diverse perspective that can connect the threads within social, ecological, and capital systems. His vision to see the nested nature in which his local and regional work affects the larger national and global context is unique. His role is shifting the industry of agriculture from a paradigm of do-less-harm to one of living system regeneration, and the community that is growing around him is a manifestation of what the world needs most these days

This conversation is really about hope for the future and Jesse’s incredible optimism and love of a challenge is so refreshing to hear in times when bad news and a lot of hopelessness feels so pervasive. If this conversation doesn’t get you excited about the potential of regenerative agriculture to create a more just and sustainable world then we don’t know what will!