Between March and June, Iowa IPL held Faith Farms & Climate conversations in Boone, Coralville, Grinnell, Panora, and online. Over eight separate group conversations, 40 individuals talked with me about the ways they were engaged in climate action, the needs they saw in their context, and the potential solutions they felt were critical to grow climate-focused actions within their own context. This year’s farmers and faith leaders shared messages of both alarm and hope about our ability to tackle our greatest challenge, and their comments tended to fall within three primary categories of focus. Here is a brief summary of what we heard this year.
Focus Area 1: Spirituality, Faith, and Ethics
The need for deeper faith language about caring for the earth
Participants offered numerous ways to describe their own spirituality or faith as one that is rooted in nature, and they talked passionately about how they think about their relationships with the world around them. The breadth of their language is a reminder that we all need rich language to help us express our concern for the planet, to mourn its wounds, and to love it back to health.
The necessity for different theological, ethical, spiritual, and practical approaches
Participants recognized that moving toward better approaches to farming and caring for the land will require new frameworks for our theological, spiritual, ethical, and practical language. The ways we think about ministry and farm-related work and the language we use to talk about our relationships with the land both impact the choices we make.
The importance of hearing neglected voices
Several participants expressed their belief that a better way forward would require us to listen to neglected voices. Some highlighted the importance of listening deeply to indigenous or international voices, while others stressed the importance of being sure to engage with younger generations.
Focus Area 2: Concerns and Solutions
Community as both a need and a solution
One of the most common things participants expressed was the deep need for community that so many people feel across Iowa. We live in a time of deep loneliness, isolation, and disconnection from one another and from the natural world. Additionally, participants regularly emphasized community as a solution to some of the big issues that plague small towns, threaten churches, or hinder changes to agricultural practices.
Driving change and understanding through storytelling
People repeatedly highlighted the importance of storytelling as a critical skill and need. Storytelling helps to fight against the problem of individualism, connects people to real-life experiences, builds empathy, and so much more.
Congregations as resilience centers
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from a significant challenge. One of the significant solutions available to faith communities is to be a resilience center, a place that is itself a resilient community and that helps individuals or entire communities to build resilience. Some participants shared stories of ways they are helping their community to be more resilient, while others were looking for help in growing their own resilience.
The importance of connecting the dots
Behind many of the stories and insights that participants shared was a recognition that it’s critical to “connect the dots” in order to make complex systems visible and understandable. The average person across Iowa often has little awareness of the many challenges faced by farmers, ranchers, and others in the ag industry, and thus doesn’t understand why they should care about things like the Farm Bill or subsidies.
The unique challenges of being a new or small farmer, or using an alternative model
People trying to start a career in farming, grow an existing farm, or be successful when pursuing a non-typical farming model shared stories of the unique challenges they faced. These were as unique as the individuals themselves and included such concerns as zoning limitations, finding a commercial kitchen to process food, and the difficulties in securing insurance for an agritourism business.
Growing water and other environmental concerns
Agriculture heavily influences the management (or mismanagement) of natural systems in Iowa. In every conversation, at least one person raised water-related concerns, while a few highlighted farming’s impact on pollinators, soil, and air quality.
Focus Area 3: Barriers and Ongoing Realities
Disempowerment and empowerment
Many faith leaders and farmers shared stories of their own empowerment or disempowerment in their contexts. Their stories help us to understand what barriers to positive change exist, what encourages individuals or communities to move in new directions, and what groups may need special attention.
Money as a barrier
Small and new farmers especially encounter financial challenges that prevent them from shifting to sustainable agriculture. Established farmers need incentives to make big changes to their practices. For congregations, factors like rising insurance costs and declining populations can make climate action a lower priority.
Time pressures, overwhelm, and personal struggles
In our busy, harried world, there are many things that command our attention. Faith leaders and farmers are certainly not immune to the realities of having too little time, too much to accomplish, and too many personal issues to engage deeply in climate action.
Better information for busy church leaders
Overwhelmed, time-crunched congregational leaders need trusted, accessible resources they can use to help them to learn about environmental topics, communicate about climate issues with their congregations, create programming and sermons, reduce information overload, and so on.
Hopelessness about political issues and solutions
Few participants felt positive about the potential for change that would be brought about through political action at the state or federal levels and noted the unresponsiveness of Iowa’s leaders to their climate concerns. Still, there were some political solutions mentioned which would bring about meaningful change.
What’s Next?
In the coming months, we’ll be launching several projects that will address some of these themes in various ways. Here are just a few of them:
- This fall, a few churches will be testing a new 6-week small group curriculum we are working on called, “Growing Faith: What the Parables of the Bible Teach us About Climate Care.” We will be going back to the materials we received to look for some places where we can tie into some of the themes, and the final version will roll out for everyone to freely use in January.
- This fall, we will be holding a Field Day at White Rock Conservancy in Coon Rapids, focused on soil health and spirituality. It will be the morning of Saturday, September 21. More details will be coming very soon!
- On the afternoon of Sunday, October 6, you are invited to another special field day. It will include an afternoon of short presentations, a tour of the greenest church in Iowa, displays, children’s activities, and more called “Climate-informed Ministry: What Can We Do Now?” It will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Coralville. You will be hearing lots more about this in the coming weeks.
- Several attendees of our Faith Farms & Climate conversations will be writing blog posts and newspaper articles about these themes.
- This fall, we’ll begin to work on a full redesign of the Iowa IPL website and other communications in order to provide you with more frequent and more useful content.
We would love to hear from you, as well! Are you hearing people talk about these themes in your own congregation, your community, or your neighborhood? Could you write a blog post about one of these themes and share your own story? Does a theme inspire an idea you would like to bounce off of us before moving forward with it? Is there unique knowledge you could offer to others through webinars, blog posts, or farm tours that would help others explore these themes? I would love to connect with you, so email me and let’s chat soon!