Soil Health, Human Health, & Planetary Well-Being

Pathways for Regenerative Economies

Special Guests: Christa Barfield (Health-Care Professional Turned Farmer), Zuzanna Zielinska (Founder, Nutrition & Kick-Starter, HarvestCare)
Co-Hosts: Antoinette Klatzky, Otto Scharmer
Social Artist: Kelvy Bird

Presencing Series Session 1 Recap

March 5, 2026

Close to 1000 changemakers from across the globe gathered for the opening session of the Presencing Series 2026, joining from Barcelona to Japan, Ireland to Venezuela, creating a planetary moment of collective sensing into what becomes possible when we recognize the living connections between soil, food, health, and community.

The session wove together powerful stories of transformation with intimate breakout conversations and collective harvest, revealing how the future we long for may be closer than we think—emerging not from grand strategies but from moments of surrender, curiosity, and willingness to become the "weirdo" who sees resources where others see waste.

The Current Rupture—And What's Emerging on the Other Side

Otto Scharmer opened by naming our moment with unflinching clarity: "We live in a time of rupture, not transition. We live in a time of fracture, not fragmentation." The geopolitical othering and absencing that has launched yet another senseless war in the Middle East represents the visible face of the civilizational crisis—benefiting almost no one while hurting nearly everyone.

Yet on the other, perhaps more silent side of this rupture, something profound is emerging: "a new awareness and inspiring living examples for radical regeneration that carry the seeds for new ways of working and living together, shifting institutional practices from extraction to regeneration and from egocentric to ecosystem awareness."

Social Soil: The Invisible Foundation of Everything

Drawing on his childhood growing up on a regenerative farm in Germany, Otto introduced the foundational concept: "The quality of everything that's growing above the ground, including the quality of the harvest, is a function of the quality of the soil."

His father converted their 800-year-old farm from conventional to regenerative agriculture 68 years ago. Today, thousands of miles from that farm, Otto recognizes: "I'm still doing the same thing. Just that in my case, and perhaps also in your case, the field that we are working with is not only the field of the farmer, but the social field."

Social fields have two main components: the visible systems and results above ground, and the less visible social soil below—"the quality of our relationships and the quality of our awareness."

Agriculture Found Me

Christa Barfield's journey began with a resignation email on January 2nd, 2018, leaving her successful health care administration career in Philadelphia. A solo trip to Martinique for her 30th birthday changed everything. Watching her Airbnb hosts pick herbs for tea each morning, then witnessing black farmer Paprika Dash's community food box system, she knew: "I was going to be a farmer. I didn't know how I was going to do it."

Eight years later, Farmer Jawn has become the largest black-owned produce farm in Pennsylvania, spanning 128 acres and eligible for Regenerative Organic Certification. But Christa shared the invisible side of visible success: the eight-foot swastika painted on her barn the same year she won a James Beard Award, years of housing insecurity while paying her team living wages, harvesting food while wearing N95 masks during wildfire smoke.

After each challenge, she asked: "Is it worth it?" And answered with her centering mantra: "Agriculture is the culture."

Her work at Farmer Jawn embodies what she calls the "Farmer Jawn formula"—every decision must improve environmental health, physical health, and social health simultaneously. "Agriculture is really the relationship between people, land and future."

Be the Weirdo

Zuzanna Zielinska's path began with coffee waste at the Danish coffee shop where she worked as a student. Learning about the circular economy made it "impossible to just take off the glasses and start seeing all of the resources being wasted." When she discovered a care farm during COVID and started volunteering, she realized: "If I want to really support the people there, I need to start from the soil."

What seemed simple turned out to be "one of the most complex and complicated systems." But she never set out to challenge the status quo: "I simply was finding small things that I was curious about and was taking tiny steps, which felt scary at that time, but not scary enough not to do them."

Those steps led to a coffee flour startup, then to food pharmacy programs in the Netherlands providing low-income type 2 diabetes patients with weekly organic food boxes from local farmers. Participant Nargis lost almost six kilos in three months and went from six medications to one—then became their ambassador.

Now Harvest Care is pioneering "agri-health" outcome payment models, working with governments and impact investors to prepay for positive health outcomes instead of paying for treatments after people are already sick. "Even if we die, there will be other people coming along and building on our ability to soften the soil."

The Master Class

When asked how to activate our highest agency, both speakers offered essential guidance:

Build on what you already know while welcoming what you don't. "Please, please build upon your experiences... it's so much more powerful when you can add the layer of regeneration to what you have already known so well."

Find what brings you joy, because "there will be many difficult moments. But you need to have a source that you can keep on coming back."

And most essentially, cultivate gratitude: "The only fuel needed to blaze a path forward is gratitude... the only thing you absolutely need is gratitude in order for what it is that is pursuing you to truly find you."

Throughout the session, hundreds of voices shared what resonated: "Soil to soul." "It found me." "Be the weirdo." "Softening the soil." "I see we are all connected."

Agriculture found Christa. Soil health found Zuzanna. What is pursuing you?

For the full session recording register here.

Animated Scribing by Artist Jayce Pei Yu Lee, original music composition by Liz Yu-Jung Li. Scribing below by Kelvy Bird.