It’s well known that our industrialized food system has abandoned priorities of nutrition and environmental stability in the pursuit of profit—a model designed to fail, especially as climate change escalates. Yet this groundbreaking book describes a glimmer of hope: a green wave of diverse female farmers, entrepreneurs, community organizers, scientists, and political leaders who operate with the shared goals of combatting climate change through regenerative agriculture, redesigning the food system, and producing healthy, socially responsible food.
From the Ground Up, by award-winning author Stephanie Anderson, offers a journey into the root causes of our unsustainable food chain, revealing its detrimental reliance on extractive agriculture, which depletes soil and water, produces nutritionally deficient food, and devastates communities and farmers. Anderson then delivers an uplifting, deeply reported narrative of women-led farms and ranches nationwide, supported by women-led investment firms, farmer training programs, restaurants, supply chain partners, and advocacy groups, all working together to create a more inclusive and sustainable world.
From the Ground Up sheds light on a set of inspiring journeys, with stories that will transform the way we think about the food chain—one that can weather the storms of climate change, conflicts, and global pandemics.
Stephanie Anderson holds an MFA from Florida Atlantic University, where she now serves as Assistant Professor of Creative Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, TriQuarterly, Flyway, Hotel Amerika, Terrain.org, The Chronicle Review, Sweet and others. Her second book on regenerative agriculture, From the Ground Up, is forthcoming with The New Press in 2024. Stephanie is the 2020 winner of the Margolis Award for social justice journalism and the 2022 winner of the Ninth Letter/Illinois Regenerative Agriculture Initiative Regeneration Literary Contest. Her debut nonfiction book, One Size Fits None: A Farm Girl’s Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture, won a 2020 Nautilus Award and 2019 Midwest Book Award.
