George Washington Carver and the legacy of Regenerative Agriculture

Each week, One Earth is proud to feature a Climate Hero from around the globe who is working to create a world where humanity and nature can thrive together.

Born into enslavement in the early 1860s, George Washington Carver rose to become one of the most influential agricultural scientists of the twentieth century. Through his innovative work with soil health, crop rotation, and low-input farming, Carver helped lay the groundwork for Regenerative Agriculture while empowering Black farmers with sustainable tools for self-sufficiency and resilience.

A lifelong quest for knowledge

Kidnapped as an infant and orphaned soon after, Carver was raised by Moses and Susan Carver, the white couple who had once enslaved his mother. From a young age, he was drawn to plants, learning to nurse sick flowers back to health and earning the nickname “the plant doctor.” 

Carver left home at age 12 in search of education. He walked ten miles to attend a school for Black children in Neosho, Missouri, and slept in a barn his first night.

Later, after being rejected from Highland University due to his race, he worked as a homesteader and farmhand in Kansas before studying art at Simpson College in Iowa. There, a teacher recognized his talent for depicting plants and encouraged him to study botany at Iowa State Agricultural College. 

He became the first Black student, and later the first Black faculty member, at Iowa State, earning both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in agricultural science.

Teaching soil stewardship at Tuskegee

In 1896, Booker T. Washington invited Carver to join the Tuskegee Institute, where he would spend the next 47 years leading the Agriculture Department. Carver’s mission was clear: help Black farmers break the cycle of poverty and soil depletion caused by monoculture cotton farming. He taught practical methods of crop rotation, composting, and the use of nitrogen-fixing legumes like peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans, and cowpeas to restore soil fertility.

Carver also invented the Jesup Wagon, a mobile classroom that brought agricultural education directly to rural farmers. Through lectures, hands-on demonstrations, and bulletins, Carver shared sustainable techniques that aligned with both ecological health and community well-being.

Restoring land and livelihoods

In the early 1900s, Southern cotton farms were devastated by the boll weevil beetle. Carver saw an opportunity to shift the region’s agricultural system. He promoted diverse crops that enriched the soil and supported nutrition and economic independence for Black farmers. 

Peanuts became one of Carver’s signature crops. Although he did not invent peanut butter, he developed hundreds of other uses for peanuts, ranging from dyes and paints to glues and oils. His 1916 bulletin How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption provided recipes, industrial applications, and instructions for maximizing profit from small harvests.

Carver also created dozens of products from sweet potatoes, including flour, vinegar, starches, and even synthetic rubber. He emphasized that crops could be interpreted in many ways, offering farmers multiple streams of income. His goal was not commercialization, but empowerment through practical innovation.

Fame, influence, and environmental vision

Carver’s work caught the attention of leaders around the world. He met with Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as Mahatma Gandhi, Henry Ford, and the Crown Prince of Sweden. In 1921, Carver testified before Congress in support of a tariff on imported peanuts, impressing lawmakers with his scientific expertise and down-to-earth manner. Time magazine later dubbed him the “Black Leonardo.”

Despite his fame, Carver remained focused on service. He gave free advice to farmers, advocated for racial harmony, and donated his life savings to establish the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee to continue agricultural research. In total, he published 44 bulletins to help farmers with everything from hog feeding to tomato preservation.

Carver also championed environmentalism long before it was mainstream. He urged farmers to preserve forests, feed hogs with acorns, use compost and swamp muck as fertilizer, and rotate crops to regenerate soil. His work directly influenced organic and permaculture movements still in use today.

A legacy rooted in justice and empowerment

Carver’s dedication to sustainable farming was deeply intertwined with his spiritual beliefs. A devout Christian, he viewed science and faith as complementary forces and taught his students to pursue both character and knowledge. He compiled a list of virtues, including generosity, honesty, and humility, that he believed defined true greatness.

Though he never married, Carver developed close partnerships with students and mentees, including Austin Curtis Jr., a young Black scientist to whom Carver bequeathed his estate. Upon his death in 1943, Carver was buried next to Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee University. The epitaph on his grave reads: “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”

Honoring a regenerative pioneer

George Washington Carver was posthumously honored with numerous schools, parks, stamps, and even a national monument—the first in the United States dedicated to a Black American. His legacy is not only preserved in museums and textbooks but continues to thrive in today’s regenerative agriculture movement, which echoes his belief in healing the land through science, stewardship, and service.

Carver’s story is a reminder that the path to climate solutions has always existed, in the wisdom of working with the Earth, not against it.

“I like to think of Nature as an unlimited broadcast system… if we will only tune in.” —George Washington Carver