From Dust Bowl to Life: Time to Regenerate our Nation from the Ground Up

A wall of dust rose over the heartland of Illinois, claiming lives and reminding us: When we abuse the soil, our safety and security suffer. Regenerative Organic Agriculture is the path forward.

In the spring of 2025, central Illinois was swallowed by a wall of dust so dense it erased the horizon—and lives along with it. Vehicles collided in a deadly chain reaction on Interstate 55, as visibility vanished and the dust became a visible cry from the land, a desperate signal of the devastation being wrought upon it. This was not a natural disaster. It was the consequence of decades of extractive farming practices that leave the land bare, lifeless, and vulnerable. It was a warning that when we abuse the soil, we unravel the systems that protect our safety, our health, and our future.

The dust storm that caused the deadly multi-vehicle pileup on Interstate 55 in Illinois was not an anomaly—it is part of a disturbing trend.

Triggered by 35 to 45 mph winds lifting bare, degraded soil from recently tilled farmland, the storm reduced visibility to near zero and resulted in the deaths of at least eight people.

The National Weather Service confirmed that the dust came from exposed agricultural fields—land left vulnerable by chemical-dependent, high-till farming practices that destroy soil structure, eliminate ground cover, and kill the living organisms that bind soil together.

Similar dust-related incidents have been reported across the Midwest, including new warnings issued in 2025 for areas as far north as Chicago, cities that have rarely, if ever, experienced such alerts before.

Scientists and soil experts warn that without major shifts in land management, these events will become more frequent, more deadly, and more widespread.

This is not simply about the weather. This is about how we farm. It is about how much living topsoil we lose every year, estimated globally at over 24 billion tons.

In the United States alone, we lose approximately 5.8 tons of topsoil per acre, annually, on conventionally tilled cropland, far outpacing natural soil regeneration. At this rate, many regions face functional topsoil depletion within decades.

The land is sending a message. And if we fail to listen, the dust will only rise.

Nearly a century ago, our nation faced a similar reckoning. During the 1930s, the Dust Bowl decimated the Great Plains. Plumes of dust reached the steps of the Capitol, and black blizzards blotted out the sun.

Out of that devastation came a visionary response. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, understanding that healthy soil was the foundation of national security and human health, launched one of the most ambitious environmental recovery efforts in history.

He created the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), now the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and established a network of local soil and water conservation districts across every county in America.

These districts served as the living bridge between farmers and the federal government, stewarding practices that rebuilt topsoil, restored resilience, and returned life to the land.

President Roosevelt did more than create bureaucracies. He planted trees. Thousands of miles of shelterbelts and windbreaks were established across the Midwest, recognizing that roots hold soil, trees anchor climate, and perennial life is the guardian of the land.

Today, the wisdom of that era is being buried under mountains of synthetic fertilizer, sprayed away by herbicides and pesticides, and plowed under by high-till monoculture systems that leave soil lifeless, structureless, and exposed. The result? Not just dust storms but the slow collapse of the very ecosystems that sustain us.

The current Administration’s response is the exact opposite of the Roosevelt Administration. While dust storms have swept across the Midwest, the Trump government has fired at least 1,700 NRCS employees whose very jobs have been to protect the soil, under increasingly difficult conditions where large corporations have intervened to put profit over the protection of the land.

The modern agriculture system, built on inputs rather than relationships, treats soil as a medium rather than a mother. Glyphosate, dicamba, and other chemical cocktails degrade the biological communities that hold soil together—fungi, bacteria, worms, and insects.

These living networks create aggregation, porosity, and the glue that makes soil resilient to wind, water, and drought. When they’re gone, the soil is naked and vulnerable.

Across much of the American heartland, annual cropping systems dominate the landscape, especially in the Corn Belt. These systems leave the ground vulnerable for most of the year, producing food for people and livestock only during a narrow growing window. And even then, most of what is grown is not food for people, but grain for confined livestock and corn for ethanol. Industrial fields stretch for miles without feeding a single family.

Ironically, much of rural America has become a food desert for this very reason. Thousands of acres may surround a town, yet no real food is actually grown. We are growing feed, not food—fueling machines and meat factories.

For the rest of the year, the land is left bare—a desert of dust and chemical residues. But this is not how nature feeds herself. It is not how she nourishes the billions of organisms who dwell in every acre of living land. In nature’s design, fertility is continuous, cover is constant, and relationship is the root of resilience. Nature is never barren. Her soil is clothed in life—protected by plants, nourished by decay, and teeming with diversity. Life protects life.

Industrial agriculture leaves the soil exposed—stripped of cover for months on end. What remains is a barren landscape: monocultures at best, naked earth at worst.

The agricultural industry holds a profound responsibility: to shift from extraction to stewardship, and to restore health to the land from which all health flows.

In contrast, the land practices of Indigenous people have always honored the perennial, the diverse, the reciprocal. Landscapes were managed as living wholes, with fire, grazing, and planting used to enhance biodiversity and maintain fertility.

Permaculture, deeply inspired by Indigenous and ancestral wisdom, recognizes that every element of the landscape is part of a web. It asks: where does water go? What covers the soil? How do plants support each other?

It mimics the forest, not the factory. In permaculture systems, the ground is always covered—by mulch, living plants, or groundcovers. Trees, shrubs, crops, and animals live in dynamic interplay. The soil is fed constantly, just as the forest floor is replenished with falling leaves and decomposing life.

What we witnessed in Illinois is not an isolated tragedy. It is a harbinger. It is a call to return soil to the center of our agricultural, environmental, and public health policy. Soil must not be a footnote in a climate conversation or a variable in crop insurance. It is the living foundation of civilization itself.

We must:

• Reinstate and fully fund the USDA’s Organic Certification Cost Share Program, which supports farmers transitioning to ecologically sound practices.

• Restore and empower the Natural Resources Conservation Service, giving it the staffing, training, and authority to once again be a trusted partner in land stewardship across rural America.

• Redirect federal subsidies away from extractive agriculture and toward regenerative organic practices that build soil health, increase biodiversity, and protect water systems.

• Invest in education and farmer-to-farmer networks that share knowledge about low-till organic farming, cover cropping, managed grazing, agroforestry, permaculture, and composting—nature’s original tools of fertility.

• Make soil health a national security and healthcare priority, integrating it into climate mitigation, water protection, food access, and rural development strategies.

Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) was developed in direct response to the growing misuse of the word “regenerative” by industrial agricultural interest. As corporations began to adopt the term to promote chemical-based, extractive systems - spraying instead of tilling, exploiting labor while marketing “sustainability” - a line had to be drawn.

During my time as policy chair at the Rodale Institute, I was honored to help lead the creation of ROC as a standard rooted in systemic integrity together with Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), Dr. Bronner’s and Patagonia. We linked soil health, animal welfare, and workers’ rights to define what regenerative organic truly means, not just the absence of harmful practices denoted by the organic standard, but the presence of deep ethical relationships.

ROC was created to put the culture back into agriculture. Because regeneration, at its core, is not a marketing term. It’s a way of being in right relationship with the land, with one another, and with the future.

Agribusiness is not agriculture. It is an industrial system designed for profit extraction, not land stewardship or human health.

True agriculture, rooted in the Latin agri cultura, the cultivation of the land, is meant to be life-giving. It is the original covenant between humans and Earth: to tend and to be tended.

Our landscapes are shaped by agriculture. Our bodies are nourished by agriculture. Our communities are grounded, literally, by agriculture. Every life, every day, is touched by agriculture.

Through agriculture more land is managed than any other human endeavor. The way in which agriculture is managed carries not only responsibility, but it also brings consequence.

We are what we eat—and what our food eats. When food is grown in poisoned soil, with chemical inputs and lifeless systems, we internalize that harm.

When food is grown in living soil, through relationships of care, we nourish life. Agriculture must become the foundation of a new, life-supporting culture, one that regenerates ecosystems, revives rural economies, and restores our collective health.

And each of us can take part in this renewal. We can choose food that supports soil health and life. Each of us, where possible, should buy USDA Certified Organic food. Organic is the baseline that ensures no synthetic pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, or sewage sludge were used.

Further, seek out higher-integrity Organic+ certifications like Biodynamic (Demeter), Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC), Real Organic Project. These standards use USDA Organic as a baseline and then improve upon it ensuring higher animal welfare (which can never be truly guaranteed in any system, certified or not, but this is the best we have), fair labor, and soil regeneration.

Buy from local farmers you know and trust, especially those who farm organically but may not be able to afford certification.

Every meal is a choice. Every purchase is a chance to restore the Earth, restore community, and restore our health.

The dust storms are a warning. We have an urgent task to begin to restore America’s soil, to support all living systems which provide the food we eat. If our productive soil is gone with the wind, with it goes our hopes for healthy food, and a healthier America.

The soil is not a resource. It is a relationship. And as we learned under President Roosevelt, when we align with the principles of nature, we grow more than crops we grow resilience, grow nutrient-dense food, and grow healthy.