Precious Phiri is one of my favorite people on Earth, even though we have only met in person a few times. We met at a conference on soil carbon in 2014 and hit it off right away–and again in 2015 at a conference on water, where I also met Walter Jehne for the first time. Both Precious and Walter traveled to Vermont after that conference and a small group of us put on a mini conference on very short notice.
In 2017, inspired by an email thread in which a colleague was looking for article ideas for “O” Magazine, Precious and I started meeting regularly on Zoom along with Judith Schwartz, Cindy Eiritz, Diana Donlon, and Alexandra Groome in a group we called SWISH: “Sisters Working in Soil Health.” As a group we shared our evolving careers, our struggles, and a lot of laughs—helping each other in numerous ways—until our globe-spanning schedules (Africa, Australia, North America) got too far out of synch and Zoom fatigue set in, in late 2021.
Since then, Precious and I have learned, taught, and written some together—and often in parallel—with organizations such as the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. We check in for late night conversations about life and work regularly when we are puttering at home or she’s up with a new baby, most recently her son who was born shortly after this conversation was recorded in January.
Precious Phiri is a founding trustee and director of IGugu Trust, the Africa Coordinator for Regeneration International, an educator for Ecosystem Restoration Camps, and advisor/educator for the Land and Leadership Initiative, and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. She spent nine years as the Coordinator of Training at the Africa Center for Holistic Management—the Savory hub in Zimbabwe—and is an accredited professional in Holistic Management by the Savory Institute. She has more than 18 years of experience in programs curation, curriculum development, community organizing, networking, land monitoring, and using the Holistic Management process to implement regenerative actions.
She contributes actively to many networks on the African continent; PELUM, Seed and Knowledge Initiative, and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA). She is coauthor of Whole Landscapes, Whole Communities in the Barefoot Guide Series, and frequently speaks at conferences, bringing stories and issues of small holder farmers to global platforms.
Precious writes: “One of my biggest inspirations in life is the resiliency and generosity found in nature, the possibility to reduce poverty, restore dignity, rebuild soils, and restore food and water security for people, livestock and all life. My main interest is to promote abundance thinking and reverse poverty, desertification, loss of wildlife, and climate change and its effects. I am continuously grateful for my upbringing by my heroic late grandmother, who stood her ground and protected the girl kids she raised from early arranged marriages of the day, and for a well-wishing UK-based family that made me access education. Without them, I could have never have known the resilience and stubbornness of hope, and the great community of leaders on whose shoulders I stand.”
Precious Phiri: Sharing cattle, shifting mindsets. Toward food sovereignty in Zimbabwe.