Annual Report 2025

Fibershed Annual Report 2025

In 2025 our work deepened through renewed commitments to the landscape and the people who steward it. We focused on the restoration of working lands, building career pathways for practitioners focused on climate and restoration, and developing new partnerships that will empower this work to both grow and endure over the long-term. In 2025, we supported, coordinated, and managed 251 land-restoration projects, and the Climate Beneficial Agriculture Program now includes 159,169 acres of food- and fiberproducing land. These completed projects are now annually drawing down an estimated 26,894 metric tons of CO₂e.

We also hosted our first academic internships, welcoming seven undergraduates from California State University, Sacramento, into a program focused on fiber systems policy, climate, and public health. In addition, we designed and led a bio-circular textile practicum for professors from ten universities across the United States. Through courses, presentations, and hands-on learning opportunities, we continued to engage the general public, reaching 992 people, many of whom participated directly in skill-building courses at the Fibershed Learning Center.

The creation of this annual report, and the work it chronicles, is an important testament to the strength and resolve of both our team and the network of organizations, advisors, and colleagues who have retained their creative spirit in the wake of profound and destabilizing change. Here we have documented their efforts with direct quotes, quality photojournalism, and thoughtful (although concise) storytelling. Our work and reporting remain entirely people-powered: You will not find generative AI used on any of these pages. The writing, graphic design, photography, and data collection are all done by real people.

Thank you for making this work possible. Your generosity has directly enabled our work to restore ecological function to working landscapes, invest in skill building for the next generation, and restore resilience to regional manufacturing. And thank you for supporting both our team and the wider network of human beings with whom we collaborate, all of whom are giving it their all to create a system of material culture creation and participation based in regeneration and a love for human and nonhuman communities alike.

Rebecca Burgess Executive Director

Climate Beneficial Agriculture

Transitioning to soil-regenerating practices is no easy task. But research has shown that American farmers are ready and willing to implement these practices if they are supported in three key areas: risk mitigation, new market access, and integration into supportive value chains.

Fibershed designed its Climate Beneficial Agriculture Program around these interdependent needs. Today, even amid significant federal funding cuts, this approach has allowed the program to grow by aligning public and private partners around practical solutions that de-risk transition, create market demand, and rebuild regional value networks.

Career Pathways

We are asked weekly by young and old people alike, How do you enter this field? People are keen to participate in any actions that contribute to our farming systems becoming more biodiverse, resilient, and climate benefitting. While we are working to develop and fund an internship program for 2026, we were able to get started in 2025 with an “externship,” with the funding provided from an external source.

Climate Beneficial Advocate

In 2025, for the first time, we created a Climate Beneficial Advocate position and were grateful to have an opportunity to work with Rachel Getman from the Southern California Fibershed on this collaboration. The advocate role focuses on learning from different members of the Climate Beneficial team at every stage of the soil-to-skin journey. From in-field plantings, to brand outreach and Cotton Tour support, advocates gain hands-on experience working behind the scenes at the intersection of agriculture, market adoption, and brand engagement.

“This movement doesn’t just happen behind screens or a spreadsheet but together with hands in the soil, planting seeds in the ground!”

Creating Pathways for the Next Generation of Leaders

Fibershed collaborated with Rising Sun to provide a fully funded job training internship focused on supporting the next generation of leaders entering the green economy. Our team was excited to welcome Erick Perez for a sixteen-week internship focused on our Climate Beneficial Agriculture monitoring and verification program.

Over the course of his time with our team, Erick organized datasets on greenhouse gas mitigation and collaborated with us on creative projects, including building a digital, interactive map of farms and domestic supply chain partners. Erick showcased his supply chain map during the October Climate Beneficial Cotton Harvest Tour, and brands from across the country were able to interact with and visualize domestic production opportunities. We are grateful for all of Erick’s contributions and to Rising Sun for the support.

“I enjoyed working with everyone and being able to meet in person at Bowles Farming Company, which was also an amazing way for me to step out of my comfort zone and just get out there!”

Direct Investments

To accelerate growers’ adoption of climate-benefitting practices, we provide critical financial support that bridges the gap between on-farm stewardship and emerging markets. While implementing these practices requires significant investment, this on-ramp of stacked funding— combining philanthropic, public, and private dollars— works to de-risk the adoption phase, offset project costs, and reward the very people driving the change on the ground to ensure that these climate-positive practices are both impactful and financially viable.

Five Years of Delivering Incentives and Reducing Barriers to Implementation

Between 2020 and 2025, Fibershed allotted a total of $2,054,660 to growers to support the implementation of climate-benefitting farming practices. These funds were a combination of private philanthropy and local, state, and federal cost-share programs. Through this $2M in funding, a total of 212 projects were completed and 14,348 acres enrolled, bringing our total acreage in the program to 159,169 acres. From these completed projects, 7,498.02 Mg CO₂e is drawn down annually.*

As part of the Healthy Soils Program Block Grant, and based on project planning we conducted in 2025, Fibershed will reimburse $3.1 million to Producers between 2026 and 2028 to implement climatebenefitting farming practices. These funds will yield 384 additional projects on 2,453 acres.

*The amount of CO₂e reduced includes both emissions reductions and carbon sequestration resulting from on-farm investments, which cover growers for the cost associated with the implementation of carbon and conservation practices—estimates calculated through COMETPlanner.

What is Mg CO2e?

Mg refers to metric tons (also known as MT, tonnes, or megagrams) and is equal to 1,000 kilograms or about 2,204.6 pounds. It is a common way of quantifying and measuring greenhouse gas emissions. CO₂e (carbon dioxide equivalent) is the standard unit for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions. Because different greenhouse gases contribute to global warming at varying degrees (methane, for example causes twenty-five times more warming than carbon dioxide), using CO₂e allows the impact of all the greenhouse gas emissions to be expressed in a common unit, where 1 Mg CO₂e is the global warming equivalent of 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide.

Maximizing the Value and Impact of Carbon

The gap between voluntary carbon market prices and social cost of carbon–based (SCC)* valuations is widening, increasing the demand for outcome-based programs that reflect true societal climate costs.

To account for the SCC, the Environmental Protection Agency currently estimates a central value of $190 per metric ton of CO₂e, a number that places a greater weight on future climate damages than past calculations.

The Climate Beneficial Agriculture Program does not plan to develop carbon credits, but we have—through our incentives program—calculated an amount per ton that we estimate represents a truer cost than other values. We estimate that we have provided an average of $319.74 per metric ton of CO₂e to growers through the Climate Beneficial Program’s incentive payments, which aligns with the upper range of carbon valuations.

In contrast, the voluntary market price value falls between $30 and $120 per metric ton of CO₂e, with often less than 50 percent of these sums going to the grower.

*The SCC is an estimate, in dollars, of the economic damages that result from emitting an additional ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. See Elijah Asdourian and David Wessel, “What Is the Social Cost of Carbon?” Brookings, March 14, 2023, https://www. brookings.edu/articles/what-is-the-social-cost-of-carbon/.

“One of the best ways to improve the productivity of grazing land, while also increasing its potential to sequester carbon, is by applying compost and seed. Applying compost is very expensive. With the grant, it was affordable for me to add compost and seed to thirty-five acres of our grazing land. Within a few months we could see the improvement in productivity, diversity of plant species, and overall health of the pasture. And of course this improvement on the surface reflects the health of the soil beneath.”

Healthy Soils Program USDA Climate-Smart Commodities Grant

The Healthy Soils Program (HSP) has been developed over the past ten years as a collaboration between state agencies to promote the stewardship of healthy soils on California’s agricultural land. In a pilot program that launched in 2023, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) awarded a total of $62 million in funding to fourteen block grant recipients to administer HSP on its behalf throughout the state. As one of these recipients, Fibershed manages a three-year $5 million grant, with $4 million of the grant funding allocated for direct payments to producers for on-farm projects.

Technical Assistance

CDFA dedicated $1 million in grant funding (over the course of three years) to grant administration and technical assistance for fifty-three growers enrolled in the program, with assistance provided on everything

from project design, implementation, and documentation, to annual soil sampling. At least 25 percent of all funding and technical assistance provided supports socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, as categorized by the 2017 Farm Equity Act, which includes the following groups: African Americans, Native Indians, Alaskan Natives, Hispanics, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.

On Farm

Through HSP, 482 practices have been planned across 5,248 acres in seventeen counties, which will be completed incrementally throughout the three-year grant period. In 2025, 101 of these practices were completed, with a total of $916,680.68 in reimbursements issued to thirty-three growers.

Per Practice (Planned)

*Windbreak / shelterbelt and Hedgerow planting are measured in feet

**Cover crop, mulching, and prescribed grazing are repeated annually for three years; the acreage for

Following the Trump administration’s termination of the USDA Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC) grant in April 2025, Climate Beneficial Fiber regional partners convened to deepen our work and maintain our engagement with growers through the Climate Beneficial Program beyond the scope of the federal grant, even as resources became limited.

This collective partnership, now the Climate Beneficial Fiber Alliance, includes The Carbon Cycle Institute, Fibershed, NY Textile Lab, and Seed2Shirt, all of which work directly with food and fiber growers in Alabama, California, Georgia, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, the Northern Great Plains region, and Tennessee to accelerate adoption of soil-regenerating agricultural practices through improved access to markets.

Before the USDA PCSC grant was terminated, $486,151 in cost-share reimbursements were distributed to growers across four regions, supporting 22 practices over 5,960 acres. The top practices implemented included cover cropping, no till, compost application on rangelands and croplands, strip tillage, and range planting.

Addressing Funding Gaps and Looking Ahead to 2026

The catalytic institutional support for this work was funded by the USDA Climate-Smart Commodities program, which was terminated by the Trump Administration in the first quarter of 2025. Sustained funding for the Alliance is sought so that we can deepen the support provided to growers nationwide: expanding carbon farm planning services, increasing producer enrollment across underserved and small farm communities, and expanding marketing and supplychain capacity in order to meet the rapidly rising market demand. Bringing climate-benefitting natural fibers to the market to meet this demand requires sustained investment from both private and public funders. The level of national impact we need to truly achieve our goals cannot be met through fragmented regional projects alone.

Transitional Support

$357,745 in cumulative payments from private foundations were provided directly to growers to ensure continued practice adoption and synthetic chemistry eliminations on over 430 acres of cropland.

To sustain the momentum of early adopters implementing Climate Beneficial practices, we are providing transitional financial support that bridges the gap between on-farm stewardship and emerging markets, allowing growers to continue investing in these practices while market demand and deeper sourcing relationships grow. As longer-term brand commitments and procurement pathways continue to more formally take shape, these incentive payments ensure that growers do not shoulder the full cost of practice implementation alone, helping to balance risk during this critical period.

Partnerships

From Resource Conservation Districts (RCD) in California to our partners in the Climate Beneficial Fiber Alliance, this growing community of coordinators, organizers, and stewards is making land regeneration a function of our economic activity—a much-needed reversal of the current economic design.

Technical Assistance

As the HSP administrator, Fibershed ensures that technical assistance is available for every grower enrolled in the program throughout the grant period, by either providing support directly or coordinating local support with a qualified technical assistance provider. With fifty-three growers distributed across seventeen counties, this level of support is only possible through a broad network of nonprofit and university partners. Growers are supported in project implementation, documentation, and reporting by twelve technical assistance providers in addition to Fibershed staff, making grant funding of this type more accessible to smaller and underrepresented growers while increasing the quality of land stewardship activities conducted through the program.

Further benefits of these partnerships continue to emerge, but regularly include collaborative events, better access to knowledge and local resources (such as equipment and funding sources), and increased visibility of Fibershed within the agricultural community as a whole.

“Fibershed has played a key role in turning our vision— of supporting landowners and agricultural producers to ensure viable agricultural operations and protect natural resources—into reality.”

JAKE TAULBEE, HUMBOLDT COUNTY RCD

Conservation Agriculture

In collaboration with the Carbon Cycle Institute, Fibershed led the completion of one new Carbon Farm Plan and one new Grazing Management Plan in 2025 as part of CDFA’s Conservation Agriculture Planning Grants Program (CAPGP). These plans allow landowners to develop long term roadmaps for resilient land

management through close collaboration with a team of technical assistance providers, and are also often prerequisites to access funding for implementation. Completion of these plans can help growers unlock further support for years to come from grants like the Healthy Soils Program.”

Climate Beneficial Fiber Alliance

Since the federal termination of the United States Department of Agriculture Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC) grant in April 2025, Climate Beneficial Fiber regional partners have collectively convened to keep the work going. As a result, our engagement with growers through the Climate Beneficial Program has deepened beyond the parameters of the federal grant program, even as resources have become more limited.

This collective partnership, now called the Climate Beneficial Fiber Alliance includes the Carbon Cycle Institute, Fibershed, New York Textile Lab, and Seed2Shirt—all of which work directly with food and fiber growers in Alabama, California, Georgia, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, the Northern Great Plains region, and Tennessee, to accelerate the adoption of soil-regenerating agriculture practices through improving access to markets.

The Climate Beneficial Fiber Alliance partners with fiber and food growers producing wool, alpaca, and cotton in California, New York, the Northern Great Plains, and the Southeast to accelerate the adoption of soil-regenerating practices that benefit the climate, strengthen on-farm resilience, and build regional fiber networks. The Alliance provides enrolled producers with technical assistance, while funneling state, federal, and philanthropic funding to the creation and implementation of whole farm planning on working landscapes. Once a grower is verified through the Climate Beneficial™ Verified framework, the alliance connects on-farm impact data and the story of transition to markets that value ecosystem transformation and regeneration.

The Climate Beneficial Fiber Alliance works nationally across key agricultural regions in the West, Midwest, Southeast, and Northeast, prioritizing equity by directing 40 percent of funding to small and underserved growers. The Alliance operates a well-coordinated, multi-regional network of farmers, technical assistance providers, supply chain partners, and market channels, demonstrating that this collaborative model works and can scale.

“We’re

not just taking out the bad— we’re adding back the good.”

“These numbers aren’t just metrics— they represent changes you can see and feel in the field.”

In 2025 the Alliance held seven community events that served the general public and special invite groups (brands, merchants, mills, investors, policymakers), including: California HSP Planting Days and a Climate Beneficial cotton farm tour, NY Textiles Lab

and

and a fundraiser with Triangle Bikeworks.

Implementation

Farm tours, planting palettes of native species, and building verification systems that supply chains needed to meet their climate goals is all part of how we enhance the virtues of agriculture and reward growers for doing what it takes to benefit society in a multitude of ways beyond a single bottom line.

Climate Beneficial™ Verification Program Updates

The Climate Beneficial™ Verified (CBV) program is designed to provide farmers and ranchers with the direct technical and financial support that they require to transition from conventional to climate-benefiting practices. The CBV program prioritizes both chemical reductions and elimination and soil health improvements, offering whole farm planning, technical assistance, and a site-specific approach to driving environmental and social outcomes.

CBV vs. CBV-T

Growers start the planning and monitoring process on the Climate Beneficial™-Transitional (CBV-T) track. Once a whole farm plan is complete and practices are gradually added to their stewardship strategy, growers can market their fiber as CBV. Through direct measurement, we annually monitor and verify the continual improvement and innovative work that our grower community has embarked on to stabilize our climate while producing high- quality fiber and food.

159,169 acres enrolled

Climate Beneficial Verified (CBV) or CBV-Transitional (CBV-T) Practices

B5 Framework

As a verification and product label, CBV provides an industry-aligned mechanism to compensate growers for landscape transformation and deliver brands the data and storytelling assets necessary for their climate reporting goals. Over the past year, we launched the B5, or “Beneficial 5,” Verification Framework to quantify, monitor, and reward growers for outcomes achieved through implemented practices.

Beneficial for… SOIL HEALTH, WATER SECURITY, BIODIVERSITY, CARBON CAPTURE, and COMMUNITIES

The framework is designed to deliver maximum value back to growers based on the impacts they are driving on the ground; support whole farm, place-based planning; and meet evolving brand requirements within a changing landscape of claims and Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions reporting by measuring progress over time. In 2025 we published a revised version of the CBV Standards, which outlines our tools for measurement and soil testing protocols, practice criteria, outcomes metrics, governance models, and regional partners that ground our work in cotton and wool systems.

All growers enrolled in the CBV program in 2025, both verified and transitional, were issued certificates of verification (CoV). The CoV validates that program requirements have been met, while connecting on-farm practices to fiber and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts. We issue these documents annually to support marketing and communications around growers’ fiber, providing a comprehensive overview of CBV field- and fiber-level data, in-field practice implementation, and associated GHG impacts and improvements resulting from active program involvement. We issued fifty-two certificates to growers in 2025.

Beneficial for SOIL HEALTH

Beneficial for WATER SECURITY

Beneficial for BIODIVERSITY

Beneficial for CARBON CAPTURE

Beneficial for COMMUNITIES

Climate Beneficial™ Verified

“Creating a long-term Carbon Farm Plan helps our family ranch prioritize what we can realistically accomplish. It allows me to focus on the day-to-day animal husbandry and land stewardship knowing I have a plan and goals moving me forward.”

JIM JENSEN JENSEN RANCH & TOMALES SHEEP COMPANY, THIRD-GENERATION SHEEP RANCHER, CBV GROWER

“We’re in a place where customers want a story. They want a connection to something real. And this gave us that—it’s not just wool, it’s this whole system.”

BARCLAY SAUL FOUNDER, KYRGIES CBV BRAND

“We’ve been farming this land for six generations, our focus is on stewardship. Climate Beneficial™ helps quantify and recognize practices we’ve been doing for years, and encourages us to push further.”

CANNON MICHAEL BOWLES FARMING COMPANY

SIXTH-GENERATION FAMILY FARM IN MERCED COUNTY, CBV GROWER

“The Climate Beneficial™ framework ensures we’re not just making claims— we’re standing behind them with real data and integrity.”

DAVID ROSHAN LAGUNA FABRICS, KNITING MILL IN LOS ANGELES, CBV PRODUCER

Healthy Soils Program

“The farm used the grant to establish hedgerows, which increases the land’s ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere into the soil and plants, and to naturally filter out pollutants from rain runoff. Fibershed was invaluable in helping the farm secure this grant.”

FIONA WONG MUSTANG ACRES

“The HSP grant made a real difference for us, especially in today’s financial climate. It allowed us to invest in things we likely wouldn’t have otherwise, and it connected us with people we’ve learned from and enjoyed working with.”

RICHARD FELIPE, TRIPLE F RANCH

“We are grateful for the assistance with planning and implementation of several aspects of last fall’s pasture renovation and continued support through this year as the pasture became established. Having this help was a game changer for this year’s grazing.”

“The Healthy Soils Program allowed us to improve our forage species better suited for sheep grazing. The range planting has increased forage availability, helped us manage grazing more effectively, and contributed to healthier soils and more resilient rangeland.”

WALTER HACKETT FERNDALE FARMS

Cotton Tour

During the fall of 2025, we invited and hosted sixtyseven people, including teams from some of the world’s largest retailers, at Bowles Farming Company in Merced for a Climate Beneficial Agriculture field tour that was timed to enjoy the cotton harvest. The event doubled in size from the 2024 tour. Attendees from Marketing, Fabric Research and Development, Sustainability, and Innovation Departments had a chance to hear from the multigeneration farmers, technical assistance providers, and manufacturers that inform our program.

Participants engaged all of their senses at the daylong event. Activities included: listening to cotton plants and their interactions with soil through biosonification with a musician from Modern Biology; observing soil health demonstrations; and smelling madder roots simmering in natural dye pots used to dip California grown-and-sewn CBV T-shirts. Participants conducted soil aggregate stability and water-holding capacity tests to better understand soil organic carbon ratios. Everyone shared in a sitdown lunch while listening to Point Blue’s bird monitoring experts help identify the species immediately around us.

Tour participants measured implementation results from 722 acres of CBV California Cotton.

• 1.77 Mg CO2e/acre average CO2e drawdown (into soils and vegetation annually) for the 2024 season

• 1,277.94 Mg CO2e estimated drawdown annually across all acres, equivalent to removing approximately 278 passenger vehicles from the road for a year

• 140 percent improvement in soil organic carbon (SOC) during 2021–24

• 37 percent average reduction in synthetic nitrogen (fertilizer) from conventional baseline

• 20 percent average year-over-year reduction in synthetic nitrogen

• 40 percent average reduction in synthetic pesticides from conventional baseline

• Full elimination of glyphosate

• Full elimination of WHO Class 1a (extremely hazardous) chemicals

The impact data highlighted above is based on California farmer impact data from the 2021–24 harvest seasons and rotated acreage to date in the CBV Cotton Program. Pesticide reductions are measured by volume of active ingredient and include insecticides, generic pesticides, and herbicides. SOC values are based on 2021–24 data. A single passenger vehicle releases about 4.6 Mg of carbon dioxide per year, according to historical US EPA estimates.

“I would highly recommend a farm tour to anyone in the industry, it will leave you feeling more connected to the Earth and soil that is responsible for growing so much of what we use to make our products.”

CHARLOTTE

TOWNER MATERIAL DEVELOPER, ALLBIRDS

THIS PAGE Attendees of the Cotton Tour comparing Climate Beneficial and conventional soil samples in an aggregate stability test, a key indicator of soil health

OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT CBV Tees in the dye pot; Tarun Nayar of Modern Biology leading a cotton listening session; Cannon Michael, President and CEO of Bowles Farming Company and wife Heidi Nickel Michael listening to the cotton they steward; Gino Pedretti of Pedretti Ranches and Derek Azevedo and Cannon Michales of Bowles Farming Company sharing their experiences integrating climate-benefitting practices on a farmers panel; tour attendee holding CBV cotton and seed in the field.

Regional Textile Economies

Regional textile economies connect food- and fiberproducing landscapes to local creators, upcyclers, and—ultimately—composters, making soil-to-soil textile production possible by replacing extractive and wasteful supply chains with systems that nurture land, people, and local economies alike.

Decades of disinvestment have hollowed out regional manufacturing, while the textile industry has become dependent on cheap plastic fibers and underpaid overseas labor. The result is a supply chain that is optimized for speed and scale, but structurally incapable of circularity. What has been lost—referred to as the “missing middle”—is those regionally specific small businesses that once processed, manufactured, repaired, and returned materials to the land.

The missing middle matters both ecologically and economically. Regional infrastructure is both good for Main Street economies and essential for producing biologically circular systems that eliminate the harm created by the linear systems we currently rely upon.

Career Pathways

Supporting workforce training is essential to sustaining regional economies. Fibershed provides education and training for animal management and the cultivation of bio-circular design practices.

The care and stewardship of flocks and herds relies on a wide range of specialized skills and vocations, each playing a critical role in animal welfare, grassland health, fire fuel load reduction, and climate-benefitting agriculture. Fibershed strengthens this ecosystem by

Healthy Flocks, Healthy Humans

With support from Fibershed, the Hopland Research and Extension Center delivered another successful year of sheep shearing school and live lambing courses, expanding access to essential skills for California’s working landscapes. Fibershed helped ensure broad participation by supporting a sliding-scale tuition model, full scholarships for select students, and the production of a bilingual live lambing course.

The sheep shearing school draws on industry best practices but is intentionally designed to serve a wide range of practitioners, from commercial shearers to small flock managers and hobbyists. Training emphasizes

ensuring access to education and hands-on training through direct financial support, curriculum development, and student recruitment.

Simultaneously, we support bio-circular design by expanding opportunities for students to pursue research and demonstration projects, providing the tools and raw materials needed to test ideas and advance new functional applications.

Camp Kaos

In 2025 Fibershed partnered with Kaos Sheep Outfit, a respected Northern California contract grazing operation led by third-generation sheep ranchers and environmental educators Robert and Jaime Irwin, to expand hands-on animal husbandry training. Working alongside sheep shearer Stephany Wilkes and veterinarian Rosie Busch, the team developed applied courses focused on improving animal health, survival, and long-term land stewardship outcomes.

“The staff and barn facility are top-notch. The standard of excellence and dedication to professionalism are inspiring.”

proper body mechanics, conditioning, and recovery, equipping participants to work safely and sustainably over the long term. In an industry in which injury, burnout, and turnover are common, this focus on longevity and humane practice is critical.

Ninety-five percent of respondents were extremely satisfied with the knowledge they gained during class, and all of the respondents expressed that, after the class, they would be actively involved in sharing knowledge of humane shearing, seeking opportunities to continue practicing shearing, shearing their own sheep, and/or offering shearing services to others.

“I loved moving sheep, getting to practice putting them in pens for shearing, moving them out of the barn, and receiving this stockmanship training was so great.”

“My favorite thing was gaining confidence in my ability and going from feeling like I would never be able to shear a sheep to shearing three sheep in a day and wanting more!”

Fibershed supported this work by providing financial assistance to students with demonstrated need, helping ensure these skills remain accessible to anyone seeking to enter or strengthen their role in grazing and land management. Courses were held on-site at Camp Kaos and Pluth’s Homestead Ranch in Clearlake Oaks, creating an immersive learning environment for all students.

This program emphasized practical, humane care—from live lambing to herd health and herding dog training— equipping participants with the knowledge and skills to sustain both animal welfare and the viability of land stewardship operations.

Camp Kaos 2025 Courses

Four classes

Hands-On Live Lambing (offered twice)

Rumen Health, Worms & Parasites

Herding Dog Training

Fifty students

Eight men, forty-two women

Half received free or heavily discounted attendance

Women in the Bioeconomy

FIbershed collaborated with students from Lynda Grose’s Fashion Investigative Studios: Machine Knitting course at the California College of the Arts and the women-led, California-based company Mango Materials to develop next-generation biodegradable textiles.

The students created a suite of samples that were both soft and stretchy by blending Fibershed’s Climate Beneficial wool with a methane-derived biopolymer developed by Mango Materials. This project highlights the vital role California women play in the bioeconomy.

“I hope our findings and experimentation swatches will fuel more people to think about their clothing and where it’s going after its life cycle ends.”

JEILYN MARTIN

Direct Investments

The year 2025 marked a major step forward in Fibershed’s work to rebuild the “missing middle” of regional manufacturing. Through new collaborations with entrepreneurial teams, Fibershed continued to develop and implement practical solutions to long-standing gaps between fiber production, finished goods, and the broader market.

Redwood Rise Wool Washing Station

Fibershed is supporting a multi-stakeholder team to address a growing bottleneck in California’s regenerative grazing economy: how to bring the increasing volumes of wool generated through fire fuel load reduction projects to market. Working in collaboration with the University of California Hopland Research Extension Center, shearer and author Stephany Wilkes, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Rural Community & Economic Advisor Alec Dompka, and product development consultant Krystle Wood of Matereevolve, the project examines the infrastructure required to process this emerging wool supply.

Because wool washing is a baseline requirement for any downstream use, the team is evaluating facilities capable of washing approximately 6,375 pounds of wool per day, or 32,000 pounds per week. The analysis considers utility demands, energy sources, water system requirements, and the physical details required to build within California’s environmental and permitting frameworks. Upon completion, the project will deliver a comprehensive assessment of permitting, supply and demand, facility scale, and cost, positioning the work for investor evaluation and next-stage development.

From the Field: Making Ts

In 2025 Fibershed designed a fully “grown-and-sewn” California T-shirt made with Climate Beneficial™ Verified (CBV) cotton from Pedretti Ranches, Stoneland, and Bowles Farms and technical labor from Los Angeles–based knitting and cut-and-sew facilities. This T-shirt will be utilized by artists and makers in our community, each of whom have created unique designs, dyes, and screenprints for the shirt. The project responds directly to sustained demand from our sister nonprofits and small brands seeking garments that reflect their values.

To ensure the accessibility of this project, we structured a co-op purchasing model that provides the T-shirt at factory floor cost without minimum purchase orders.

“It’s not just where the cotton comes from, but the relationship behind it. That’s what’s missing from so much of the global textile supply chain.”

Partnerships

Rebuilding and reinvesting in people and the infrastructure they need to make soil-to-soil systems a reality in their communities is a team sport. From the hyperlocal to the international community of Fibershed organizers, to the next new generation of entrepreneurs focused on regional milling, upcycling, and repair, our local and global partnerships are key to advancing economic policy, ensuring access to capital, and building networks of skilled practitioners who can physically transform our material culture from life-detracting to life-enhancing.

International Affiliate Network

Fibershed’s Affiliate Program consists of seventy-nine Fibershed Affiliates around the country and globe working tirelessly in their home communities to bridge fiber system gaps, build community, and advocate for regional soil-regeneration fiber and dye systems.

Fibershed facilitates and uplifts the Fibershed Affiliate community by operating a no-cost membership program that offers educational resources and training, branding and outreach assets, and opportunities for peer-to-peer and industry learning.

In 2025 we focused on developing resources to enable Affiliate organizers to better connect, collaborate, and share knowledge, thus helping individual Affiliates and the Network to be more effective and impactful. In addition, we coordinated and developed an Affiliate Steering Committee to create a governance structure and policies for the Affiliate Network. The Steering Committee’s work provided guidance documents focused on what it means to be a Fibershed Affiliate and how individual Affiliates work together in the Network.

In order to create a stronger connection between Fibershed’s and the Affiliates’ work building regional fiber economies, we developed, facilitated, and coordinated the following inter-network activities:

• Twenty-seven working group meetings focusing on advocacy, alternative business models, bast fibers (flax, hemp, nettle), and public education

• Twelve monthly virtual Affiliate meetups

• Four quarterly Affiliate meetups at which Fibershed staff provided updates on the organization’s strategy and projects, enhancing transparency and learning between core organization programs and regional Affiliates

• Seventeen Affiliate newsletters

• Increased participation in the Affiliate Network Slack (communication channel) of 46 percent, from sixtythree members to ninety-two members

• The formation of a six-person Affiliate Steering Committee of Affiliate organizers representing different regions to develop draft policies for the Affiliate Network. The proposed policies aim to provide clarity around what it means to be a Fibershed Affiliate and how individual Affiliates work together in the Network.

Rust Belt Fibershed Annual Symposium

IMAGES TO RIGHT The Rust Belt Fibershed held its annual symposium in 2025, with six hundred people attending in-person and more than one hundred by livestream. The community framed the presentations around the question, What if we used textiles to cultivate life-giving relationships among people and planet?

Bast Fibers Working Group

Fibershed supports a number of working groups that are “by and for” Affiliate community members. One 2025 working group gathered to learn more about bast fibers, strengthening regional knowledge, collaboration, and momentum around flax, hemp, and other bast fibers through bimonthly gatherings that brought together farmers, researchers, processors, artisans, and advocates committed to building a regenerative, locally rooted bast fiber economy.

European Fibershed Hub

In 2025 European Fibershed continued its work to strengthen and coordinate the collective impact of regional Fibershed Affiliates across Europe. While aligned with Fibershed’s global mission and values, the organization adapts its approach to European ecological, cultural, and policy contexts. Its work focuses on building long-term capacity among Affiliates, expanding public and stakeholder awareness of regenerative textile systems, and connecting cross-regional partners, NGOs, and networks to advance a decentralized, climate benefitting fiber economy.

In 2025 European Fibershed actively engaged with the Make the Label Count Coalition and convened advocacy roundtables, including a Farm to Fashion discussion at the European Parliament in Brussels.

European Fibershed expanded its participation in European Union–funded project consortia, marking a shift from seeking collaborators to being invited by established academic and research institutions. It also launched community grants to seed cross-regional initiatives, including Wool March Brussels 2026, North European Wool Culture, and Farm-Scale Linen Spinning.

The Board is also exploring shared governance models that would strengthen cross-regional collaboration while safeguarding Fibershed’s core values and honoring the distinct natural and cultural heritage of each region.

Fibers Fund

In 2025 Fibershed worked with Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems Funders and Fibers Fund Founding Director Sarah Kelley to support the transition of the Fibers Fund into an independent nonprofit, with its founding organizations now formalized as advisors and board members.

The Fibers Fund was designed to provide flexible sources of capital to businesses across the natural fibers sector, aligning financing opportunities with real operational needs. Its grants support the adoption of Climate Beneficial agricultural practices rooted in cultural knowledge and heritage, and increase sector access to fair and just financing tools.

In 2025, the Fibers Fund provided two loans to fiber businesses:

Range Revolution is a woman rancher–led company producing leather goods made from regeneratively raised US cattle hides, sourced from its own herd and those of other ranchers certified through Ecological Outcome Verification.

Botanical Colors is the premier US supplier of natural dyes and dyeing services as an alternative to synthetic dyes, and it works with regional organic and regenerative farmers to source US-grown dye plants.

In 2025, the Fibers Fund provided six grants to fiber businesses:

Acadian Brown Cotton

This Louisiana initiative aims to preserve heirloom Acadian Brown cotton seeds, promote regenerative agriculture, and create a traceable and sustainable textile supply chain with local farmers.

Native American Fiber Program

The grant provides support for a fiber hemp feasibility study by the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes in northeast Montana.

High Hog Farm

The grant supports the development of the Black Agrarian Fiber Center to expand fiber processing and build a sustainable regional supply network in Georgia.

Turquoise Indigo Fibers

This New Mexico initiative seeks to revitalize Churro wool from Navajo shepherding families and blend this with fiber hemp also produced by Indigenous growers.

Vermont Natural Tannery

This family-owned business tans sheepskins as an added revenue line for more than three hundred small New England sheep farmers.

Seed2Shirt

The grant provides technical assistance for this womanled business that lifts up Black cotton farmers through Climate Beneficial Agriculture and market access.

Producer Network of North Central California

The Fibershed Producer Network of North Central California welcomed eleven new Producers to our more than three-hundred-member network of local farmers, ranchers, manufacturers, designers, and natural dyers. This community represents every facet of the North Central California Fibershed and actively works together to collaboratively educate and market goods produced by small businesses.

Sierra Spinning

California is home to the nation’s largest skilled textile workforce in knitting, cutting, and sewing, in addition to producing the longest staple cotton on the planet. Yet critical gaps in domestic infrastructure prevent these skills and resources from being fully utilized within regional supply chains.

Sierra Spinning, a collaboration of the Ecology textile brand and Bowles Farming Company, is working to connect California’s talent and material base by building a facility designed to bridge gaps in spinning and textile recycling. With a planned launch in spring 2028, the mill will be the first in North America to source CBV cotton from regional farms, creating positive ecological outcomes for ten thousand acres of food- and fiberproducing land and ensuring farmers are paid equitably for their commitment to soil-regenerating agricultural practices.

Implementation

From providing free tools that help ranchers assess wool quality to relaunching our National Mill Inventory mapping tool, Fibershed is building new networks of trusted manufacturers capable of processing a wide range of fiber qualities from farming and ranching partners. This work supports shepherds and farmers in generating added value from what they grow, strengthening regional supply chains, from field to finished fiber.

New Manufacturing in Our Fibershed

In partnership with Berkeley-based textile innovation startup unspun, Fibershed developed 3D woven prototype pants using CBV California-grown cotton and 3D woven Climate Beneficial-Transitional (CBV-T) wool pillowcases on unspun’s industry-leading, wasteeliminating machines.

The CBV-T wool was spun at Mountain Meadow in Wyoming and came from Northern Great Plains wool growers;the cotton was spun in North Carolina at Hill Spinning. Thanks to the strength of CBV’s California Acala cotton varietal, unspun successfully experimented with weaving single, non-plyed yarn for the first time on its machine. Acala cotton is only grown in California, and this special long staple upland varietal creates not only a softer product but also a more durable one.

“I wove 8 meters of CBV California-grown cotton in total and there were no stops or breaks during running. The yarn was very soft, which one can feel in the final product.”

ALEXANDER WINCH TEXTILE ENGINEER, UNSPUN

SPLENDID has adopted a farm-forward approach to sourcing. After attending the 2024 Cotton Tour at Pedretti Ranchers, the Splendid team worked across departments to step outside traditional procurement pathways and source Climate Beneficial fabric grown, knit, and sewn in California. In collaboration with our supply chain partners, Splendid developed a Climate Beneficial T-shirt that launches in the spring of 2026.

In a full circle moment, the Splendid team attended our 2025 Climate Beneficial Cotton Tour at Bowles Farming Company, capturing promotional material for its spring Climate Beneficial product launch one year later.

Climate Beneficial™ Verified Products

AVAILABLE ON THE MARKET IN 2025

Twenty-two brands of all sizes developed CBV products that are available on the market as of 2025.

Supply Chain Maps

In 2025 Fibershed focused on ensuring that Climate Beneficial fiber produced in California—and across partner regions in New York, the Southeast, and the Northern Great Plains—could be processed through regional mills and textile manufacturing hubs. This work is essential to translating regenerative production into viable products and markets.

To support this effort, the Climate Beneficial team developed a supply chain mapping tool that helps brand partners design custom pathways based on specific product needs. By building new relationships and strengthening existing ones with mills across the United States, Fibershed expanded and refined a national network of processing partners, mapping fifty-three supply chain partners.

Fibershed also updated its National Mill Inventory, originally launched in 2015 to help small and midscale producers connect directly with value-add manufacturers. The refreshed, publicly available tool now includes ninety-six mills currently in operation and is designed to connect farmers, artisans, and small brands with regional processing partners suited to their fiber type, capacity, and scale.

“We’re constantly adapting. Most of the small mills last for five to ten years, and then shut down. We appreciate the support; driving business to our facilities to keep regional processing alive is important.”

Wool Quality Testing

In 2025 Fibershed established a new collaboration with New York State’s fiber ecosystem, partnering with the New York Fashion Innovation Center’s newly developed laboratory. Through this partnership, Fibershed offered free wool quality testing to Climate Beneficial Producers in both New York and California.

Access to fiber quality data—including micron count, a measure of the thickness of individual wool fibers—helps producers understand the most appropriate and highestvalue uses for their wool. This information allows growers to better align what they produce with a mill’s processing capabilities and can also inform long-term flock breeding decisions, strengthening the viability of regional fiber supply chains.

Fibershed worked with the North Central California Producer-led Committee to coordinate direct markets and public events aimed at building direct connections between farmers and buyers, as well as opportunities to repair clothing, build natural fiber literacy, and increase the overall access of regionally grown natural fibers and dyes.

Markets and Events Fibershed

Natural Dyer’s Spring Market

The goal of the spring market was to promote local natural dye plants and undyed materials. Natural dye author and teacher Heidi Iverson provided natural dye demonstrations to the public and eleven Fibershed producers sold natural dye plant starts, dried goods, and natural fiber yarn for purchase.

Fibershed Fiber Farmers’ Market

The autumn market is our largest of the year, and showcases all of the amazing goods produced in our region. 25 Fibershed producers participated this year. The event showcased a wide variety of natural fiber and naturally dyed goods sold direct from the farm, ranch, mill or studio.

Fibershed at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market

Fibershed Producer Members led an effort to bring local fiber and natural dye producers to an influential set of Bay Area farmers’ markets, creating a direct and meaningful connection between these producers and the public. Thousands of attendees engaged with information about fiber production, land stewardship, natural fibers, and local processing.

Redding Mending Circle

This free community space focuses on clothing care, handcraft, and the linking of crafters with local farmers, as well as developing textile and natural fiber literacy. Participants ranged from beginner to highly skilled, but all have shown a thirst for more knowledge and awareness on local fiber and craft subjects.

Public Education & Policy

Fibershed brings soil-to-soil fiber and textile systems to life through campus-based initiatives, handson learning at the Fibershed Learning Center, and sustained advocacy work. In 2025 expanded collaboration has deepened this impact, including the launch of the Healthy Textiles Coalition (HTC), support for a growing network of vocational training programs, and a partnership that established our first college-level internship program. We are linking arms across academia, business, and the nonprofit sector to build a connected, inspired, and supported generation of land stewards, coalition builders, and active network members who seek to advance equitable, climate-forward regional fiber systems.

Career Pathways

In August 2025, Stanford University issued a striking report that documented a 13 percent relative decline in employment for workers who were early in their career in industries exposed to generative AI. This trend reflects something we have also seen at Fibershed. Every job description we posted in 2025 drew a 200–600 percent increase in early-career applicants. Our short-term response is to double down on the people at the center of our work in three critical ways.

First, we will continue to prioritize people over tasks performed by large language models in our staffing choices. We will continue to value human teams, humangenerated language, and human perspectives.

Second, we will also continue to support fouryear colleges in developing internships focused on interdisciplinary learning that connects fiber systems to ecosystem and human health, climate, and labor issues— encouraging students to examine impacts across every stage of the fiber and dye life cycle.

Finally, we remain committed to providing living-wage employment at the Fibershed Learning Center, while offering hands-on experience working the land.

Taken together, these efforts aim to cultivate a new generation of observant and grounded land stewards who are equipped to navigate and support the health of complex systems for the collective benefit of all.

California State University Sacramento x Fibershed SB707

Advocacy Internship Program’

For six weeks during the summer of 2025, we worked with seven students from the fields of environmental studies, fashion, and family studies for a hands-on internship led by Dr. Emily Oertling; Lexi Fujii; James Goldstene, MS; Christine Flowers, MS, MEd; and Emily Merrifield. Guest experts brought in by Fibershed included Meridian Jacobs Farm, Just Zero, the University of Michigan, and California Cloth Foundry.

The internship provided classroom and on-farm learning in soil-to-soil systems and specifically supported students as they analyzed California textile policy (SB707) and extended producer responsibility (EPR). The students conducted a literature review, developed communications strategies and content, and completed team projects, including social media campaigns, a well-worded comment letter to CalRecycle (the State of California’s agency tasked with implementing SB707), and a blog post on microplastics and safe clothing.

Interns built practical skills in policy analysis, research, and advocacy, contributing ideas and resources that supported Fibershed’s work and advanced broader textile sustainability efforts.

“It was inspiring to see the whole textile process in one spot: from growing wool to spinning the fibers and weaving those fibers into textiles. Seeing the source made me reflect on how I value my clothing.”

SAMUEL, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

“As a fashion major, I’ve understood that fashion is history, technology, psychology, art, etc., but this internship expanded my perception of all the industries involved. What we wear is a bigger statement than most realize.”

ELLA, FASHION MERCHANDISING AND MANAGEMENT

Learning Center Stewards

At the Fibershed Learning Center, Land Stewards learn to care for living systems. Their work supports the regenerative life cycles of native perennial grass meadows, freshwater creek habitats, and fiber, dye, and medicinal crops.

Stewards focus on cultivating a diverse, species-rich understory that provides forage for insects, birds, and mammals while also sustaining a rich palette of ethnobotanical species. These landscapes serve as active classrooms, with students utilizing them for classes, including plant and fungi identification, basketry, natural dyeing, fiber processing, and pigment production.

“Before working at Fibershed, I was dead set on being a marine biologist. The Learning Center made me appreciate how captivating the landbased habitats on-site can be. Now I consider ecology to be one of my passions and I hope to pursue marine ecology in graduate school.

Financially, I saved the money I’ve earned from working at Fibershed, and I hope to put it toward a master’s program. Fibershed has influenced my perspective on material culture and ecosystem health.

Fibershed made me realize how important it is to invest in items (particularly clothes) that are biodegradable and/or have good longevity. Prior to working at Fibershed, I had never had the opportunity to observe and help restore a habitat for over a year, which was a valuable experience. I love seeing the changes indicating recovery and healthy ecosystems. I am eager to continue expanding my knowledge.”

HAYLEY NEWMAN

“My time at the Fibershed Learning Center has greatly impacted my life. Having a space to cultivate my skills and grow with the land has been such a blessing. The stability and support that my work at the Learning Center has brought me are unmeasurable.

After five years, I find myself living a healthy and balanced life, a life I have always dreamed of and at times thought was not possible. Emotionally, physically, and financially, this space has offered me so much opportunity to learn and grow into a life that is deeply connected to the land and the power of intention. I hold deep gratitude and respect for the land and the people that make the Fibershed Learning Center possible.”

“Working at Fibershed is part of a career pivot and also a return to an interest I had forgotten about. I was looking for a job that reconnected me to the landscape, and one that provided a change in mindset.

One of the nice things about working in the same garden for a whole year is getting to intimately know an individual plant or garden bed, and also the character of a species. My ability to identify plants is based not only on strict physical properties, but also its attitude or personality, and how that changes through the seasons.

Learning about the plants has made the landscape legible in a way it wasn’t before. I understand better how they function in their niche, what they are best at, and where they will thrive or struggle. I was recently asked how I know so much about plants, whether I studied or went to school, and I replied, “‘Just from working here.’”

WILLIS BIGELOW

Partnerships

Fibershed’s partnerships are focused on designing the next-generation incentives and guardrails needed to support private-sector adoption of climate-benefitting agriculture, regional manufacturing hubs, and other facets of soil-to-soil systems.

Together, through this work, universities, mill owners, upcyclers, farmers, municipal governments, and sister networks are working together to build a new, natural fiber system free of exploitation of people, fossil carbon–based materials, and energy use.

Healthy

Launched in 2025 by Fibershed and Just Zero, the HTC is a diverse group of nonprofits, businesses, researchers, industry experts, designers, manufacturers, farms, and ranches committed to the shared goal of developing true circularity within textiles and decentralized natural fiber processing systems.

This coalition unites a growing group of members— including The Or Foundation, Garment Worker Center, Ethix Merch, Remake, SUAY, Californians Against Waste, Sierra Spinning, Black Fiber & Textile Network, and Torus Consulting—working across every stage of the textile life cycle.

Through collaborative policy and advocacy, the coalition advances a shared agenda focused on climate benefitting, nontoxic natural fiber production and the development of equitable, transparent regional supply networks. Its work supports longer product life cycles— prioritizing repair, reuse, upcycling, and mechanical recycling—while promoting the creation of high-quality and dignified jobs. At the same time, the coalition centers human health and works to ensure that traditional textile knowledge and practices are carried forward alongside modern innovation.

The Textiles & Toxicity event took place at Kinship Fashion Coworking Studio in Portland, Oregon, bringing together like-minded professionals from across fashion and textile, academia, policy and nonprofit spaces to explore microfiber pollution and its environmental impacts. Cohosted by Torus Consulting, Materevolve, Libby Sommer LLC, and Oregon State University, the event facilitated cross-sector learning, discussion of research gaps, and collaboration on solutions to advance sustainable textile practices.

Alongside this event, we attended seminars and other gatherings focused on textile waste recovery, clothing consumption research, and circular textile systems, supporting ongoing partnership development across research, industry, and policy sectors.

“I can feel the energy building and it’s very exciting.”

“This initiative is dedicated to ensuring that our community’s perspectives inform policy work related to plastics, toxics, natural fibers, and sustainable alternatives.”

“The best way to protect the climate and conserve resources is to make less clothing... We cannot recycle our way out of this problem.”

KIRSTIE PECCI EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JUST ZERO

“The HTC has already proven itself to be a powerful collection of sciencebased, well-informed, industry-shifting collaborators. I’m excited to see how this group’s work will transpire toward a socially and environmentally responsible materials future.”

“We believe the creation of a connected clothing ecosystem in California—that takes care of people and planet—is possible and necessary.”

RENÉ GAUTHIER FOUNDER AND CEO, SIERRA SPINNING

University Partnerships

University partnerships have provided the opportunity to collaborate with undergraduate and graduate students from multidisciplinary backgrounds. Because fiber and dye systems integrate soil ecology, environmental science and justice, design, and the arts, students with a range of academic and life experience find inspiration in designing projects to advance Fibershed values through mixed media–focused public education.

California College of the Arts (CCA)

Stanford d.school students visited the Fibershed Learning Center as part of their work on the the Kerra Project, which was among the top ten Biodesign Challenge Winners for 2025. The project addresses the global waste of 85% of wool supply by collaborating with Bay Area farmers to reclaim its value, focusing on building connections between textile innovators, farmers, animals, and the land.

“My small group of insurgents is still buzzing with inspiration. I’ve heard much appreciation not just for the knowledge shared but the vision and determination modeled.”

CHARLOTTE MCCURDY DESIGN LECTURER

In 2025, Executive Director Rebecca Burgess was a visiting instructor to the Ecology of Clothing course at CCA. We also hosted a group of students from the Fashion Department at the Learning Center for a day of experiential learning.

Emily Carr University of Art and Design

Fibershed presented to undergraduate and graduate students, nurturing an expansive and ongoing relationship that has been active since 2011.

California State University (CSU), Sacramento

Since 2023, Fibershed has collaborated with students and faculty in the Fashion Merchandising and Management Program at CSU, Sacramento, on various projects in the classroom and at the Fibershed Learning Center. CSU, Sacramento serves low-income, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American, Pacific Islander, and Black students.

University of Massachusetts Boston

UC Davis

At the University of Massachusetts Boston, Fibershed worked with Cameron Russel, the author of How to Make Herself Agreeable, and her colleague and photographer Mei Tao. Mei and Cameron visited the Learning Center to spend time on the land. Cameron’s class in Boston class hosted community quilting bees and interviews, and produced a composition of documentation that included and featured Fibershed.

The UC Davis Design Department and Fibershed held a collaboration with the graduate studio, DES 225. Fibershed worked with first-year, interdisciplinary MFA design students. Students had experience in architecture, toy design, graphic arts, surface design, and textile fabrication. They created projects to educate the public on carbon cycling, building a simple healthy wardrobe, using textile waste for next-generation materials, and how to weave.

Stanford

“We introduce Fibershed’s work when we are moving from ‘informed pessimism’ to ‘informed optimism.’ Moving beyond material recycling and reuse, to nature’s carbon cycles and soil health expands students’ understanding of sustainability.”

LYNDA GROSSE PROFESSOR

“Our visit was profound for the fashion students. Fibershed brings lifetimes of experience to the outdoor classroom and are generous with their knowledge.”

GREG CLIMBERS CHAIR, FASHION DEPARTMENT

“

Fibershed has become a foundational part of our ecological design curriculum. At a time when many of these discussions have been drowned out by political rhetoric, these examples point the way to a hopeful future, based on real world experience, which shows that stable, economically viable communities that are regenerative in nature, are not only possible, but already exist!”

CRAIG BADKE PROFESSOR OF CRITICAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES AND GRADUATE STUDIES IN DESIGN, CLIMATE ACTION COCHAIR

Visual

for the

“Our work alongside Fibershed has been an invaluable experience. Fibershed’s work in the region has strengthened how the program addresses raw material and legislative education content. In the current climate, I can testify that it is only with Fibershed’s support that our program has been able to create beneficial, sustainable opportunities for our students.”

DR. EMILY OERTLING PROFESSOR, FASHION SUSTAINABILITY

“Thank you so much for helping transnational feminist students engage with your work. We have been so excited to see all their zines, portrait essays, and quilt squares come together.”

CAMERON RUSSELL MODEL, AUTHOR, ACTIVIST, AND CO-INSTRUCTOR

“Thank you for the site visits to the Fibershed Learning Center and for coming to campus to support students through their mid-quarter review and final project review, it was incredibly inspiring for all of us teachers and students.”

Implementation

Implementation of our soil-to-soil curricula included providing a multiday immersive event for a national audience of higher educators at our Learning Center. We were able to offer expanded land access to students of all ages who participated in our skill building courses, thanks to a project we completed that doubled the size of our restoration and ethnobotanical sites. The implementation of our advocacy and policy work focused on public comment letters and responding to requests from nongovernmental agencies that seek our expertise in implementing textile waste recovery strategies.

Bio-Circular Textile Practicum

Our Learning Center was busy during the summer of 2025 with a national community of higher educators. We hosted eighteen university professors representing institutions including Berkeley College; Colorado State University; Fashion Institute of Technology; Iowa State University; Kansas State University; Morgan State University; Oklahoma State University; University of North Carolina, Greensboro; University of South Carolina; and West Virginia University, .

The practicum was designed to deepen educators’ understanding of biological systems within the fiber, textiles, and clothing (FTC) industry. Participants engaged directly with each stage of the FTC cycle, from soil to finished material, to see circularity in action and explore how systems thinking is the foundation for circular design. By breaking down disciplinary silos and fostering collaboration, the program generated new ideas to inform the future of textile education and equip educators to have the tools they need to nurture the next generation of designers and makers with an understanding of soil-to-soil systems.

“I felt inspired in many different ways: as an educator, and as a person overall . . . just seeing how Fibershed was working and their connection to the soil... definitely, that’s something we want to bring into our classroom.”

In 2025, Fibershed provided twenty-one presentations serving 992 participants

“In this time of unsettling news on many fronts, it was wonderful to be able to offer to our members a message of hope and progress toward a better future.”

TEXTILE ARTS COUNCIL IN RESPONSE TO A PRESENTATION BY REBECCA BURGESS

Implementing Coalition Values

The HTC focused on translating shared values into state-level policy implementation, as CalRecycle moves forward with SB707—California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act. As California advances textile stewardship frameworks with the country’s first textile EPR Program, our engagement is centered on ensuring that environmental health, equity, and regional resilience are embedded in both program design and execution.

A key milestone was responding to a request for information from a producer responsibility organization (PRO) candidate to inform the state’s forthcoming needs assessment. Fibershed elevated priorities aligned with HTC values, including Climate Beneficial fiber systems, toxics reduction, supply chain transparency, warnings against waste colonialism, and meaningful farmer and community participation. Our input emphasized regional processing infrastructure, soil health outcomes, and upstream investments that prioritize reducing fossil carbon–based textile production and waste prevention at the source, rather than simply managing it downstream.

Fibershed also tracked and engaged with PRO applicants to assess their commitments to healthy textiles, garment worker and community protections, and reinvestment in place-based solutions that support natural fiber textile production, processing, repair, upcycling, and reuse.

The Learning Center

The Fibershed Learning Center in Point Reyes, at Black Mountain Ranch, is a skill building and demonstration site focused on the implementation of soil-to-soil systems. We farm fiber, dye, natural medicine, and food species and continuously work to restore freshwater creek habitat and compost natural fiber textile waste to close the carbon and nutrient cycles for cotton, wool, and bast fiber textiles. We host free repair and clothing swap events for the public and began offering courses to elementary-age children this year for the first time. The space is a hub for natural dye, basketry, biomaterial, plant and fungi identification, and fiber processing–based skill building, knowledge sharing, and respite finding within the landscape.

The Fibershed Learning Center provided educational courses to 250 students in 2025, including nearly 100 tuition scholarship recipients.These classes generated public access to sustainable craft skills grounded in connecting materials, the environments from which they are sourced, and their critical ecological relationship.

2025 Learning Center Courses

Documenting Diversity: A Bioblitz of the Fibershed Watershed

Flax Processing

Vegetable Tanned Leather Clutch

Family Felting

Natural Palettes

WAX / THREADS / ROOTS

Wild Basketry:

Invasive Plant Cordage and Coiled Basketry

Wild Basketry: Invasive Plant Twined Baskets / Hand Broom

Intro to Bio Textile Design

Making Artist’s Inks

Making Lake and Mineral Pigments

Weaving Nature: Threadless Pine Needle Basketry

Working with Farm Yarns and Intro to the Dye Garden

Rooted Thread: Waxed Thread Pine Needle Basketry

Introduction to Indigo Shibori

Intro to the Hat Bench: Felted Wool Hat-Making

Help the Kelp: Create Natural Dye with Sea Urchins

OPPOSITE PAGE We hosted Leah Thomas, aka GreenGirl Leah, the author of Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet, and 60 participants, (50 scholarships) for a day of land emersion, dialogue, and craft.

Living Learning Center Lab

The year 2025 marked the completion of the Riparian Forest Buffer, trails, and an outdoor classroom. This restoration project has replaced a half acre of land that was permeated with impassable invasive Himalayan blackberry and poison hemlock. The revitalized east side of Black Mountain Creek now supports white sedge harvesting sites, improving water outcomes in the floodplain while providing traditional basketry materials for Coast Miwok and Pomo weavers.

Spring Fiber and Dye Retreat

The Spring Fiber and Dye Retreat kicked off a series of activities and events that were part of San Francisco Climate Week. Our Bay Area community came together to celebrate land, craft, and human connection. We organized and hosted the event at our Fibershed Learning Center to enjoy the debut of Soil to Soul a film by Jahnvi Mange; a Soil-to-Soil Fashion Show co-organized with Rethink the Runway; dye workshops led by members of the black fiber and textile network, and garden tours led by Fibershed staff.

Direct Investments

Through direct investments, Fibershed supports both leadership and skill building for individuals growing new small businesses that contribute to the soil-to-soil network. We also directly invest in the capacity required to build our cross-sectoral national coalition, which expands and advocates for soil-to-soil systems at state and local levels.

Investing in Skill Building

In 2025, Fibershed provided thirteen scholarships valued at $2,417.50 to students attending our Learning Center courses.

County-level support was provided through voterapproved Measure A funds to support not only our restoration work but also to support nature based entrepreneurs to extend their education where needed to advance their business models.

“Forager’s Den is a project that has been dear to my heart for a number of years, but until now, I have not been able to focus on or launch due to significant constraints. As a disabled single parent, my very limited income is often entirely used up by the basic costs of living, leaving almost nothing for education.

I have a lot of confidence in Forager’s Den as a benefit to the community and as a way for my family to become self-sufficient. The support from Fibershed has been indispensable in helping me progress to a self-sufficient business owner who is providing quality educational offerings and wearable products to children and their families.

The grant funds are crucial in covering the costs for all of the necessary workshops and classes I am taking to retrain myself. All in all, this grant means everything to the success of my educational and professional goals.”

ESKE ADDAMS

Growing Our Staff

Alexandra Farah joined the team to recruit, support, and coordinate strategy for a broad Healthy Textiles Network, aligning organizations across the public and private sectors. Her work is rooted in her connection to ecology and education, spanning regenerative agriculture, global impact campaigns, and farmer-centered research in circularity, bioregional design, and sustainable material innovation. With an MSc in regenerative studies, she applies her research to advance regenerative practices and circular systems that benefit communities, industries, and ecosystems. She brings this experience to her work at Fibershed by collaborating with land stewards, designers, and organizations to advocate for climate benefitting and regenerative practices across the textile supply chain.

Strategic Communications

Fibershed’s strategic communications work is essential for creating shared public awareness and long-term movement building. Our goal is to make complex concepts—such as soil health, fiber production, textile manufacturing, and policy—legible to a broad audience, while clearly communicating what Fibershed is doing, why it matters, and how people can engage with it.

Through consistent, accessible storytelling, we work to demystify highly technical and scientific information, counter misinformation, and build trust with the broader public. We aim to expand our reach beyond our immediate network in order to grow an informed and engaged following, and ensure that the work happening on our land, in policy spaces, and across our Producer and member networks is clearly understood and actively supported.

Fibershed faced significant headwinds at the beginning of 2025 with the loss of federal funding. As a result, we transitioned away from Bark Media for our social media and PR needs and enlisted the help of an individual contributor with experience in science communication, social media, and community engagement.

In 2025 our communication efforts focused on consistent and educational storytelling that aimed to translate complex topics into clear and actionable information for a broad audience.

Healthy Textiles Coalition

Following the launch of the Healthy Textiles Coalition, members began amplifying the group’s work through their own communications—an important step in extending shared policy priorities beyond individual organizations and into broader public discourse.

• Ethix Merch published a blog post explaining its decision to join the HTC as an extension of its commitment to ethical, transparent, and sustainable work.

• Fibershed released a piece outlining our CalRecycle comment letter and our perspective on California’s Textile Recovery Act.

To further support public awareness and alignment across sectors, the coalition also issued a press release highlighting its goals and early initiatives.

Together, these coordinated communications help reinforce a unified narrative around healthy textiles, signal growing momentum, and ensure that policy conversations are informed by on-the-ground expertise and community values.

In 2025 Fibershed launched a new Climate Beneficial™ website, to strengthen understanding and adoption of our Climate Beneficial work among producers, farmers, and the broader public.

The new site is a centralized, public-facing hub where program resources, tools, education, and case studies are freely available to all.

Climatebeneficial.com also highlights our new B5 Framework for CBV (see page 15), an effective way to communicate the complex and interconnected ecological systems that CBV supports and verifies.

Education Through Communication

Across platforms, we emphasized thoughtful visuals, long-form storytelling, and content designed to meet people where they are. This approach supported steady audience growth across some platforms, along with sustained audience engagement—particularly around posts that helped demystify material systems and connected everyday choices, like what we wear, to environmental outcomes.

We continued to publish original stories on our blog, pulling from a robust network of writers and creatives, and expanded our presence on professional platforms like LinkedIn, where policy conversations are more likely to catalyze meaningful discourse.

Together, these efforts strengthened Fibershed’s ability to communicate our mission to the broader public.

Communcation in Numbers

Fibershed’s Instagram following grew from 49,500 followers to 54,200, a rise of 9.5 percent, buoyed by thoughtful photo selection, an emphasis on actionable and educational content, and increased frequency of posting.

Email subscribers remained steady at about 14,000 subscribers.

Twenty-four new stories were published on our blog.

We had increased activity on LinkedIn, with monthly posts focused on issues of policy and thought leadership. As a result, we now have 7,473 followers—1,307 of them new, a more than 21 percent increase from 2024.

Our Facebook following remains steady with 17,203 followers, a 1 percent increase from 2024.

We are honored to do this work and we thank our funders for supporting our projects and programs. In 2025, we continued in our role of leading and administering state and federal grants to build healthier soils across the state, expand markets for Climate Beneficial™ fiber nationally, and address climate change with our agricultural landscapes.

Thank You

Our donors and volunteers make our work possible. Thank you for supporting our producers, the planet, and our growing regional fiber system. We could not do this work without you.

FOUNDATION GRANTS

11th Hour Project, a project of The Schmidt Family Foundation

Anonymous Donors

Blackwood Giving Fund

Community Foundation for San Benito County

Deborah and Edward Heyman

Donor Advised Philanthropic Fund

INDIVIDUAL / BUSINESS DONORS

Alex Schwerdt

Alisa Rose Seidlitz

Alwin Paul

Anna Bonner Mieritz

and Todd A Enders

Arianne Spaulding

Aviva Garrett

Barbara Beck

Barbara Shapiro

Barry Deutsch

Benevity

Brooke Kowalczik

Carol Lewis

Carol Shu

Charlotte McCurdy

VOLUNTEERS

Aaralyn Schmid

Adele Davis

Aianna Standish

Alicia Liu

Anise Anethum

Bella Bertaud

Brooke Jacobs

Callista O’Connor

Carole K. Walsh

Donor Advised Fund: Ebor Charitable Trust

Gamble Foundation

Globetrotter Foundation

Good Chaos Fund

Marciano Family Foundation

Regenerative Agriculture Foundation

RSF Social Finance

Chelsea Fogel

Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums

Cory van Gelder

Coyuchi, Inc.

David Jacobson

Deborah Borzelleri

Edward Heyman

Ellen Gwynn Hauptli

Erin Axelrod

Everlane

Fandrich Family Trust

Fidelity Charitable

Helen Kennedy

Jaime Mayer

Jennifer Smith

Jean Moylan

Steve Madden Corporate Foundation

The McClernan Family Giving Fund of Thrivent Charitable Impact & Investing

The SHOT Fund

The Stephen Colbert Americone Dream Fund of Coastal Community Foundation of SC Vanguard Charitable

John Markoff and Leslie Terzian Markoff

John Leen

Jordan Davis

Jordan Wolff

Julia Camp

Just Zero Inc.

Kaden Zheng

Kelly Sylvester

Kenneth and Kerry Keefe

Kerry Keefe

Luz D Rooney

Michael Siminitus

Melissa Merz

Nancy Scolari

Nathaniel Davis

Rowan Tree Travel

San Domenico School

Stone Coffee

Tangible Daydreams

Terri Manning

Teresa Black

Textile Exchange

University of California, Davis

William Wallage

Yvonne Kolarik

Charlene Schmid

Erin Green

Grady Green

Heather Hayashi

Jean Crudden

Kate Sullivan

Katie Haberman

Krystle Moody Wood

Lily Grundy

Maggie Halpin Saad

Marianne Phoebe Borke

Marie Clare Brush

Megan Westerberg

Mira Musank

Nina Maloney

Paulina Binsfeld

Rachel Getman

Sarah Jones

Shay Hart

Shreya Shah

Sonia Brin

Sophia Falls

Sophia Vanderheym

Taylor Gries

Taylor Horton

Victoria Wilson

Help secure the future of Climate Beneficial agriculture.

Historically, federal climate and agriculture grants have been essential to scaling Fibershed’s work. For every federal dollar we receive, we secure three dollars in matching funds, delivering impact with extraordinary efficiency and getting funding to the soil where it belongs.

However, recent attempts to pause or cut these programs reveal how fragile this funding landscape is. We can’t rely on federal support alone to sustain this momentum.

Your contribution helps ensure climatebeneficial farming continues—regardless of political shifts—supporting healthier land, reduced emissions, and thriving rural economies. Donate today to keep this work moving forward.

Visit fibershed.org/join to become a monthly donor or make a one-time contribution.

Board of Directors

2025 Annual Report

PO Box 221

San Geronimo, CA, 94963

fibershed.org

Rebecca Burgess, MEd Chair

Kat Anderson, PhD

Marlie de Swart

Treasurer

Dustin Kahn

Secretary

Contributors

Rebecca Burgess, Cassandra Marketos, Nica Rabinowitz, Mary Kate Randolph, Navit Reid, and Vicki Russo

Design

Nicole Lavelle

Photography

Paige Green