Principal Arria Coburn has embraced the word “pivot.” She despised it during early pandemic lockdowns since it always meant a shift to the unknown. But with a year of pandemic schooling completed, she’s confident that teachers and students at her school can adapt again if necessary. 

“In the event that we do need to pivot, we have so much experience that I’m ready,” says Dr. Coburn, who leads The Springfield Renaissance School, a public magnet school for grades 6-12 in Springfield, Massachusetts. The school plans to open for full in-person schooling on Aug. 30. “We haven’t necessarily started to look at a hybrid plan or a remote plan, but we have it on file.”  

Back-to-school season is here, with school buses revving up and renewed debates over masking, distancing, and other COVID-19 mitigation strategies that many educators and families had hoped to put in the rearview mirror. 

By the end of this week, roughly 25% of K-12 students in the United States will have started school, with openings continuing past Labor Day. And even as pandemic concerns grow, dedication to reopening schools in person remains strong among many education leaders, says Thomas Toch, director of FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University in Washington. Schools learned lessons last year about safely reopening and are now better supported with $122 billion in federal relief funding from the American Rescue Plan, he says. 

“We’ve got a year’s worth of experience. We’ve learned what works and what doesn’t work,” says Mr. Toch. “We can do it well and safely, and it’s important for both academic and social and emotional reasons to get back to school.”

On July 27, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance about school reopening, including that all students and school staff wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status. The CDC recommends that students return to full-time in-person learning and advises schools to adopt “layered prevention strategies” including masks, COVID-19 screening testing, improved ventilation, hand-washing, and promoting vaccines for those eligible. 

Randy Hoeft/The Yuma Sun/AP

Aide Perez, cafeteria manager at Palmcroft Elementary School, helps a young student find a place to sit and eat breakfast before classes Aug. 2, 2021, in Yuma, Arizona.

As of Aug. 10, 87 of the 200 largest K-12 districts in the U.S. mandate masks for all students and 102 do not (the others are undecided or vaccine contingent), according to Dennis Roche, president of Burbio, a website that tracks school data.

Whether schools will – or can – follow the updated CDC guidance depends in part on geography. New York City, for example, with the largest school system in the country, is still on track to reopen with masking in September. But elsewhere, several states have banned schools from setting mask mandates. The governors of Texas and Florida reconfirmed their commitments to prohibiting mandatory face masks in schools – though some districts in those states say they plan to defy those expectations. On Tuesday, two Texas judges issued local rulings allowing officials to require masks in public schools and buildings. In Arkansas, on Aug. 6, a judge temporarily blocked the state from enforcing a ban on mask mandates.

Some schools reopening in early August have already had to change course: Carter County Schools and Martin County Schools in Kentucky delayed school reopening, and three schools in Mississippi’s Lamar County temporarily shifted to virtual learning after COVID-19 outbreaks, according to local news reports.

This year “a little more complex”

Kristen McNeill, superintendent of the Washoe County School District, which includes Reno, Nevada, oversaw in-person learning last school year in the district of about 62,000 students, which reopened with in-person and remote options last August. This school year began on Aug. 9, with the vast majority of students returning in person.

“I think we’ve learned a lot of lessons from what we were able to go through last year … whether it’s around distance education, connectivity, or how we engage our families,” says Dr. McNeill. “I don’t want to say it’s easier [reopening this year] by any stretch of the imagination. One of the things that every school district across the country is dealing with right now is the change with the delta variant and that’s making opening a little more complex.”

Parents, at local school board meetings and on social media, have fiercely argued for and against continued pandemic protocols at school, and anxiety is rising again about balancing work and child care responsibilities if schooling is disrupted. Polls also show some parents continue to prefer remote learning, with Black and Hispanic parents most hesitant about returning to school in person. 

“As long as it’s safe enough and I’m comfortable enough, they’re going back,” says Toyin Anderson, a mother of 14- and 11-year-old students in Rochester, New York. She wants her kids back in school and desires extra school counselors to help all students readjust. But she’s also concerned about crowds with more students in the building than last year when school ran on a hybrid model. 

“This COVID thing does its own thing. It’s leading and we’re following. To be honest, I fear you can make plans for today, but tomorrow you have to change them,” Ms. Anderson says.

Scientific studies during the 2020-21 school year indicated that transmission of COVID-19 in schools was not higher than community transmission rates when safety protocols were in place, according to the CDC. A July 2021 report on COVID-19 in K-12 schools by Resolve to Save Lives, led by former CDC Director Tom Frieden, stated closing schools is “deeply detrimental” and “abundant evidence shows that transmission and risk of outbreaks in schools can be reduced using layered mitigation measures.”

Success Academy, a large public charter school network in New York City, opened all of its 47 schools for in-person learning on Aug. 2. The network serves 23,000 students, the majority of whom are Black and Latino, and operated remotely for all of the previous school year. 

“It is scarier than typical to open during a pandemic,” says Eva Moskowitz, CEO and founder of Success Academy, “but we’ve been planning for months and months.” The network required vaccinations for all school staff, except those with a religious or medical exemption, and reached near 100% participation. New school furniture – such as individual tables instead of oblong shared tables – was ordered to accommodate social distancing.  

Success Academy is offering a remote option to students through the end of the first marking period in early October. As of the first day of school, 90% of students signed up for in-person learning. Dr. Moskowitz attributes the high return rate to calls administrators made to every family who initially opted for remote to discuss the benefits of in-person schooling. Those choosing remote learning fell from 40% to 10% before school started. 

Hesitancy to return

How many students return for the 2021-22 school year remains to be seen. Public school enrollment fell by 3% during the 2020-21 school year, with the largest drops in kindergarten and pre-kindergarten. Home-school rates doubled overall, including jumping from 3.3% to 16.1% among Black families, and some parents are exploring hybrid home-schooling options for fall. 

“Part of the challenge, given the great concern in recent weeks about the delta variant and rising incidents rates, is it’s going to require schools to work very hard at getting kids into school,” says Mr. Toch of FutureEd.

Last year’s pandemic schooling experience showed how much parents want to be involved with changes, says Principal Coburn in Springfield, whose students are largely Black and Hispanic. She learned early on that parents weren’t happy about finding out about decisions second hand or not being clear on the rationale behind changes. 

This year, Dr. Coburn is making a list of a cohort of parents who want to be point people for input when big decisions are necessary. The parents, about 10 from each grade level, are on a group text chat. She and her administrative team are also calling the family of every student over the summer to make sure they received their back-to-school welcome packets and answer questions.

Many educators have also learned over the past year how to make classrooms feel warm and inviting despite pandemic restrictions, says Linda Darling-Hammond, president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute in Palo Alto, California, and president of the California State Board of Education. 

“I think there are things that aren’t great. You’d like to see each other’s faces, you’d like to see how kids are enunciating their words,” says Dr. Darling-Hammond. “But lots and lots of kids and teachers have learned how to do this and be engaged, social, happy about the learning environment.”

Caitlin Yang, a rising high school junior from Boise, Idaho, is relieved that her school reinstated its mask requirement. She wishes class sizes could be smaller, but is still looking forward to school starting mid-August. 

“I’m happy to have more structured and prepared classes,” she says. “I’m excited to see my friends and have teachers naturally handle their classes this year because last year was a struggle.” 

Vahid Salemi/AP

President Ebrahim Raisi (center) waves to journalists as he is surrounded by a group of lawmakers after taking his oath as president at the parliament in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 5, 2021. His inauguration completes hard-liners' dominance of all branches of government in the Islamic Republic.

The swearing-in of President Ebrahim Raisi signals the culmination of a hard-line Iranian political retrenchment that will reverberate deeply in the country and beyond. He assumes office under a cloud of illegitimacy, after winning a one-sided June vote that saw the lowest-ever turnout in an Iranian presidential race.

The ascent of the former judiciary chief – tainted further by his role in the execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 – puts conservatives in charge of all branches of government in Iran. Hard-liners will have no one to blame if they can’t revitalize a sanctions-wrecked economy and address Iranians’ corrosive sense of hopelessness for the future.

What happens to nuclear talks with the U.S.?

Unlike many hard-liners, President Raisi has never ruled out a return to the multilateral Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the United States withdrew from in 2018 in favor of renewed sanctions.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rebuked outgoing centrist President Hassan Rouhani for trusting the West and getting burned by the deal.

Yet at his Aug. 5 inauguration, Mr. Raisi promised “smart engagement” to get “cruel and oppressive” U.S. sanctions lifted, and vowed to “support any diplomatic plan that achieves that goal.” He is likely to resume Vienna talks, now on hold after six rounds.

But progress may prove tough. Even if the U.S. were to lift all nuclear-related sanctions, many others may remain that relate to terrorism and other issues. And Iran, in turn, has pushed its nuclear program beyond the limits set by the JCPOA – for example, raising uranium enrichment to 63% purity, much closer to bomb-grade levels of 90%, and 17 times higher than the limit of the deal.

“The new Raisi administration is keen not to be seen as the reason behind a possible imminent collapse” of JCPOA restoration talks, notes an analysis by the Amwaj.media news website. But neither will Mr. Raisi likely back away from previous Iranian demands that sanctions relief be guaranteed upfront.

Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters

People watch the debate of presidential candidates at a shop in Tehran, Iran, June 8, 2021.

Will Iran’s support for regional militias be affected?

With hard-liners now in charge, analysts expect a boosted influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iranian politics and daily life.

That likely means greater “securitization” crackdowns at home – not unlike during the 2005-13 presidency of the archconservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – as well as support for its “axis of resistance” policy to counter U.S. and Israeli influence.

Critical tools for this have been Iran-backed militias. Their influence is so great across regional battlefields that the U.S. wants to rein them in – along with putting limits on Iran’s extensive missile program – in follow-on talks after restoring the nuclear deal.

Recent flare-ups include attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf, with Iran using what the U.S. Central Command says are armed kamikaze drones that in late July killed two people on a ship owned by an Israeli businessman. In the past week there have been exchanges of missile fire with Israel from Lebanon, including 19 rockets fired by Hezbollah.

Iran says its proxy militias and missile arsenal are nonnegotiable. And with senior leaders of Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces in the inauguration audience, Mr. Raisi last week praised their “resistance” and called the proxies a “source of security” for Iran.

How will Mr. Raisi cope with domestic challenges?

Any new Iranian president would inherit a near-insurmountable to-do list, and Mr. Raisi is not known for his management skills.

He has support from the very top, with some speculating that the cleric’s path to the presidency was paved – by weeding out reformist challengers, as well as conservative rivals – so that he might one day become Iran’s next supreme leader.

But Iran has seen widespread economic protests that left hundreds dead in recent years, as the currency collapsed and sanctions bit. Street protests have spiked in recent weeks over a water crisis in Khuzestan province that spread to multiple cities, with some shouting slogans against the regime, and security forces reportedly responding with birdshot and mass arrests that left at least 11 dead, according to Amnesty International.

And Iran has been hit especially hard by COVID-19. As the country faces its fifth wave, there is anger over the slow rollout of vaccines, with just 4% of the population inoculated.

Cases reached a new record this week, with state TV declaring that one Iranian dies every two minutes. The president’s official website posted photographs Sunday of Mr. Raisi receiving his first dose of the Iran-made vaccine, which is called Barakat, or “blessing.”

Going into Thursday’s election, Zambian President Edgar Lungu has drawn from a classic playbook for swinging the vote his way. His government has intimidated opposition candidates, shut down independent media outlets, and purged the electoral roll to favor the ruling party’s strongholds.

But Mr. Lungu, who has held power since 2015, now has a new tool – campaign restrictions in the name of protecting Zambians against COVID-19.

Since March 2020, governments around the world have wrestled with the challenge of staging elections in a pandemic. At least 78 countries postponed elections between March 2020 and June 2021, including 14 in Africa, according to a report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Others have gone ahead but taken extra precautions, such as limiting the size of political rallies and enforcing social distancing in polling stations.

And that, experts say, is where things get thorny, because the same kinds of measures that protect public health also make it difficult for opposition candidates in particular to get their message to voters, potentially skewing turnout and results. And the line between legitimate concern for public health and politicians trying to swing the vote in their favor can often be a blurry one. 

“COVID regulations have been a gift to the world’s dictators, and one they’ve received with open arms,” says Laura Miti, a civil society activist in Zambia.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where many democracies were young and fragile to begin with, the risk of instability associated with unbalanced elections is especially high. In late 2020, Freedom House reported that democracy and human rights protections had deteriorated in more than two dozen African countries since the start of the pandemic, part of a “crisis for democracy around the world” touched off by COVID-19.

Zambia, a landlocked southern African country of 18 million, was among them. Mr. Lungu banned campaign rallies, a measure that penalized opposition candidates since the president has continued to draw crowds of his supporters to events billed as face mask distribution, sidestepping the ban.   

“What will it benefit you to be holding rallies, but then sacrifice the lives of our citizens and voters to COVID-19 and death?” Mr. Lungu asked a gathering of his supporters in May; at the same event he announced the blanket ban on election rallies.

Police have since broken up rallies held by Mr. Lungu’s main challenger, Hakainde Hichilema, using tear gas and rubber bullets.

Crossing a line   

But while some restrictions on public gathering and movement may be justified to limit the spread of COVID-19, experts say that they have clearly crossed a line into choking the democratic process.

“The truth is that if this were really about COVID, you’d have alternative platforms set up for everyone, equally,” says Ms. Miti, who runs a nongovernmental organization in Lusaka called the Alliance for Community Action. “The rules wouldn’t just be applied to one side.”

Similar scenes have played out in other elections in the region since the beginning of the pandemic.

Last year Ethiopia postponed a national election for more than a year, to June 2021, over what it claimed were COVID-19 public health concerns. Many in the opposition disagreed, and one region, Tigray, decided to flout the national government by holding its local elections anyway. That, in turn, helped touch off a conflict between Tigray and the national government that has since escalated into a civil war.

In Uganda, meanwhile, security forces killed more than 50 people last November during protests over the arrest of opposition candidate Bobi Wine for violating COVID-19 protocols on rally size. Mr. Wine lost the election in January to President Yoweri Museveni, who won a sixth term. And during Burundi’s election last year, the government sprang a last-minute requirement on regional observers that they quarantine for 14 days, effectively ensuring none were present.

But delaying voting doesn’t always mean rolling back democracy.

South Africa, for instance, announced in July that it was postponing local government elections set for October, arguing that lockdowns had made it difficult for candidates to mobilize voters, and that turnout might be lower than expected because of COVID-19 concerns, limiting citizens’ access to their democracy. Although political parties sparred over the decision, the majority of South Africans supported it, regardless of their political leanings, according to a local poll.

Rogan Ward/Reuters/File

Presidential candidate Hakainde Hichilema casts his ballot at a voting station in Lusaka, Zambia, Jan. 20, 2015. Mr. Hichilema is trying again to unseat President Edgar Lungu in an election on Aug. 12, 2021.

In Zambia, however, the vote is going ahead on Thursday under COVID-19 restrictions, which observers say could be the deciding factor in swinging the election toward the incumbent. In the last election, in 2015, Mr. Lungu won the poll – also against Mr. Hichilema – by a margin of less than 2 percentage points, and a recent survey by the polling organization Afrobarometer found that support for the ruling Patriotic Front has tumbled over the last four years.

But many observers suspect that the ways in which Mr. Lungu has tinkered with the vote – including coronavirus-related restrictions – will still be enough to swing the results in his favor.

These restrictions have “limited the opposition’s access to the voters, which in the long run provided advantage to the ruling party,” says Fumba Chama, a Zambian hip-hop artist and human rights activist who goes by the stage name PilAto.

Should no candidate win more than 50% of votes cast this week, a runoff election must be held within 37 days. But the candidates will still face the restrictions on public association and that, say analysts, could be enough to put Mr. Lungu back in for another term.

Ted Shaffrey/AP

A woman wearing a face mask and holding a dog rides the subway in New York City on July 31, 2021. Moody’s forecast in April that New York’s transit system, the country’s largest, would lose 20% of pre-pandemic ridership due to the shift to remote working.

Traffic congestion is back. But it may not be where you expected it. 

From New York to San Francisco, downtown streets are flowing a bit more freely in the morning than they did pre-pandemic. Drive out of town, though, and by lunchtime you could be snarled in suburban slowdowns that linger into the evening. 

It turns out that working from home doesn’t mean driving less. Far from it: In some suburbs, congestion is above pre-pandemic levels, as remote workers squeeze in weekday trips to shops, cafes, and clinics, jostling for space with armadas of delivery trucks. 

And for all last year’s hype about digital nomads giving up altogether on big cities and hanging out a shingle in rural idylls, what actually happened was a faster pace of centrifugal migration to suburbs and exurbs, where cars are often the only means of transportation. 

For these remote workers who potentially face a long future commute, the calculus is that employers won’t require their presence five days a week, so they get to enjoy their new surroundings and still stay connected to urban jobs and other amenities. 

“People are living not an hour away but an hour and a half away,” says Mitchell Moss, director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University. “There’s a new recognition of the attraction of low density.” 

This shift in where people live and work is throwing up a new set of challenges. Even before the spread of a new coronavirus variant, transit systems were struggling to lure back riders wary of close proximity to others. For policymakers focused on climate change, a stampede to car-dependent communities only adds to the daunting challenge of curbing carbon emissions in transportation, a sector that produces about a third of all U.S. emissions.

And although cities are rebounding – rents, which fell sharply last year, are back up – the seismic shock of the pandemic and the tech-enabled habits of remote working it seeded will have lasting effects. 

“We’re beginning to see cities opening up. Are we going back to where we were before? The answer is no,” says John Rennie Short, a professor of geography and public policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. 

Charles Krupa/AP/File

Very light evening rush-hour traffic crosses the Zakim Bridge in Boston March 17, 2020. Compared with pre-pandemic levels, traffic during the morning rush hour into Boston is down by 21%.

Rethinking work and home priorities

Last March, as schools and offices in Boston shut down, Michael Parker moved with his wife and daughter to their vacation home in Sunapee, New Hampshire. Mr. Parker, who works as a fundraiser at a biomedical research center, figured it was a temporary relocation. By the end of summer, though, the family had decided to give up their rented apartment in the city.

Mr. Parker’s daughter enrolled in a local school, and he worked remotely; skiing and hiking filled their leisure hours. This year when his boss began bringing staff back in person once a week, he bought a small condo in Boston for overnight stays. Next month, that requirement is expected to increase to two days a week. 

Before the pandemic, Mr. Parker rode the subway to work. “We had one car that we hardly ever used, except on weekends,” he says. When they moved to Sunapee, a two-hour drive from Boston, they bought a second car.

Mr. Parker says he can’t imagine commuting to work every day, or staying away from his family during the week, if his employer were to end remote working. “I’d have to figure out some other arrangement. It would make me rethink,” he says. 

Survey and housing data show that Mr. Parker isn’t alone. 

In 2020, Boston was among several big cities that saw a sharp rise in the number of residents moving out but staying within a 150-mile radius, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland that analyzed credit report surveys. Compared with pre-pandemic years, the number of such moves rose by 18% in Boston and 22% in New York. 

And Zillow recently found that the fastest house-price appreciation in the last two years was in communities with commutes of 50 minutes or longer to job centers in expensive cities like New York and San Francisco, suggesting a willingness to take on longer commutes. 

Still, this doesn’t add up to a mass exodus from American cities. Many workers can’t do their jobs remotely and stayed put in the pandemic. And in less expensive cities like Baltimore and Indianapolis, Zillow reported that sales were actually stronger in urban centers than in suburbs. 

Analysts note that the largest shift in 2020 was not in the number of urbanites who moved out, but in the number of those that moved in to replace them. 

“People were moving out. But people are always moving out. What happened was there were less people moving in,” says Professor Short. 

The future of public transit

As states and cities reopened this year, road traffic came roaring back too ­­– on the outskirts of town. 

Compared with pre-pandemic levels, traffic during the morning rush hour into New York and San Francisco is down by 28% and 27%, respectively. Boston is down by 21%. By contrast, “we’re seeing traffic congestion back or higher than pre-COVID levels in suburban and exurban rural areas,” says Bob Pishue, a transportation analyst at Inrix, a data analysis firm. 

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, says Paul Lewis, vice president of policy and finance at the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington. “Working from home actually increases trips. People that work from home tend to make more trips during the day,” he says. 

Studies have found that telecommuters generate more tailpipe emissions than those who work in person. Working at home tees up several short trips by car to gyms, stores, clinics, and restaurants, instead of a lunchtime walk downtown or a single stop on the way home. 

Perhaps the biggest losers – aside from the U.S. carbon budget – are public transit systems. Transit authorities are waiting to see if riders return when offices reopen after the summer, though the delta variant’s spread could delay that transition. And even if the pandemic ends, there could be a lasting effect. Moody’s issued a forecast in April that New York’s transit system, the country’s largest, would lose 20% of pre-pandemic ridership due to the shift to remote working.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

John Gilbert, a barber, stands in front of the house he rents with roommates on July 28, 2021, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He moved out of Boston in March and now commutes to work five days a week. His rent is cheaper now, so he hopes to save up for a deposit on a house.

For commuter rail, the outlook is also grim. McKinsey recently warned that Boston may lose as much as 50% of its commuter ridership due to shifting work patterns, though it forecast a stronger rebound for the city’s bus and subway services. 

This points to an opportunity for commuter rail networks to rethink their role, says Mr. Lewis. The most expensive services to operate are trains that run frequently during the morning rush hour, which may become less of a priority now. “If you’re able to flatten those peaks and redeploy that service to midday and evenings, you could see ridership return,” he says.  

Rapid bus routes offer another way to tackle congestion and serve residents who depend on public transit to get to work and school, says Jarred Johnson, executive director of TransitMatters, an advocacy group in Boston. Bus lanes should be prioritized and paired with congestion charges on cars to raise money to subsidize bus and train fares, he says. 

“The bus doesn’t have to be miserable; it can be just as enjoyable as the train. But it requires us to give precedence to the 40 people on the bus as opposed to the one person in the car,” he says.   

Lifestyle changes leading to more cars

For now, though, U.S. car sales are booming on the back of stimulus checks, easy credit, and lifestyle changes made during the pandemic. Along with that boom comes growing concern about carbon emissions. Despite the fact that electric car sales make up an increasing share of new cars sold, they represent only a sliver of all vehicles on the road. 

This car dependency goes with the territory, says Professor Moss, since mass transit isn’t a viable competitor in much of America. “This is fundamentally an automobile culture. This is a country where people value choice.” 

For John Gilbert, a barber in the Boston area, last year’s shutdown left him with few choices since he couldn’t cut hair remotely. He spent his downtime lifting weights and “driving around aimlessly.” When business returned this year, he was ready to move on – and to move out. 

In March, Mr. Gilbert gave up his lease on a shared apartment six miles from his barber shop and moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 45 miles away. He was glad to opt out of Boston rental prices. “What you got to pay compared to what you got to put up with, it’s just not worth it,” he says. 

Today he drives to work five days a week, but he’s unfazed. “My rent got cut in half, but my commute only got extended by 10 minutes,” he says. “If it was over an hour every day, I wouldn’t have been comfortable doing this.” 

He hopes to save up for a deposit to buy property in Pawtucket, which seemed impossible in Boston. “I love the affordability. Really, there’s not a lot I don’t like,” he says.

As I picked up James Rebanks’ “Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey,” I was transported back to a day in the rich, deep green fields of England’s Lake District in 2019. My colleague, John Lovseth, a biology professor, and I, an English professor, had brought a group of students to meet Rebanks on his sheep farm.  

That day, he spoke of the land as a habitat, a living organism made up of complex relationships of grazing animals and native plants, insects, and animal species. He explained how the sheep, when properly managed, help create the wildflower meadows by churning up the soil, fertilizing it, and aiding with seed dispersal. 

England has lost over 90% of its wildflower meadows since World War II, and with them, important biodiversity. Rebanks asked us to pick flowers from one of his meadows and count the variety of plants in our hands. His young son Isaac proudly named many of the species around us. 

Rebanks’ passion, so evident during our visit, permeates “Pastoral Song,” which drew critical praise and continues to earn popular acclaim in the United Kingdom. His quiet strength and vision for the land is here. And perhaps more importantly, the story of his farm (and farming in general) over the last three generations is here, too. He tells how families, including his, have struggled in an increasingly mega-agricultural world – one that demands more food for a hungry world but at ever cheaper prices. 

Factory farming has created an unsustainable system in which 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions are blamed on livestock farming. Rebanks’ method – and that of a growing number of farmers around the world – presents a different model in which carbon can actually be sequestered in fields that serve both livestock and natural habitats. 

The book tells of Rebanks’ growing realization that this overindustrialized approach is ruining both the land and farmers’ livelihoods. For him, caring for farms and farmers has become identical with caring for the land. He writes, “The logic chain is simple: we have to farm to eat, and we have to kill (or displace life, which amounts to the same thing) to farm. Being human is a rough business. But there was a difference between the toughness all farming requires and the industrial ‘total war’ on nature that had been unleashed in my lifetime.” 

How to feed the world in a way that supports farmers, their families, and the environment is a key question. Rebanks offers a sensible way to think about food and the planet. His answer may not appeal to everyone. His is not a world in which our problems are solved by vegetarianism, for instance. Instead, it’s a world in which the close relationship between animals and land is explored to find a balanced system in which farming and nature can coexist. The question, he argues, is not whether or not to farm, but how to do so in a way that helps everyone. 

The book evinces the same quiet, humble, patient strength that we found in Rebanks during our visit. His prose will transport readers, introducing them to both the harsh realities and the joys of everyday life on a piece of land that has deep, personal meaning. 

This book asks readers to consider deeply where their food comes from and under what conditions it was produced. Rebanks suggests that thinking in terms of local agriculture – instead of massive industrial farms – will enable people to answer these questions, because they will share the responsibility for how land is used. This perspective shift will, he hopes, relieve farmers of the burden of advocating for holistic farming methods.

Readers will close the book, as we left Rebanks’ farm, nourished by his vision and his hope.

AP

The leading opposition figure in Uganda, singer Bobi Wine, speaks to reporters near Kampala last January.

For each new American president in recent decades, one rite of passage has been to launch a U.S. initiative to lift up Africa. For Barack Obama, the focus was on more electricity for the continent. For Donald Trump, it was negotiating trade pacts with individual countries. The emphasis was on tangible help.

For President Joe Biden, whose initiative was launched in July, the starting point is more intangible. The focus is on partnerships with Africans, mainly youth and women, who share American values such as democratic governance and accountability.

To make his point, Mr. Biden sent a high-level delegation to Africa in early August, but only to four of its stronger democracies (South Africa, Botswana, Tanzania, and Niger). His top official for foreign aid, Samantha Power, speaks of treating Africans as equals, not dependents, based on “mutual respect.” 

This values-based approach is best suited for working with Africa’s entrepreneurs, especially women and the 3 in 5 people who are under 25 years old and very digitally connected. (By 2100, about 40% of the world’s population will be in Africa.) Mr. Biden also wants to enlist the 2.4 million foreign-born Africans in the United States to shape and lead investments in small businesses.

The geopolitical wind is behind the president’s approach. “The pandemic has created unique momentum for engagement with Africa,” says Landry Signé of the Brookings Institution.

In addition, the African Continental Free Trade Area took effect in January. Dozens of countries in the 55-member African Union are now working on lowering trade barriers within the continent’s 1.2 billion-person market. Once COVID-19 is controlled, Africa could be the world’s fastest-growing economy. Of the world’s 30 fastest-growing cities, 21 are in Africa.

One other shift is rising dissatisfaction with China’s massive spending on resource extraction and infrastructure in Africa, which has put many nations in high debt to Beijing. Per Afrobarometer surveys, 7 out of 10 Africans support democracy and accountable governance. More prefer the U.S. model of development (32%) over the Chinese one (23%).

“When the U.S. is engaged [with Africa], we have better quality; we have more accountability and sustainable development which will also follow,” says Mr. Signé. In particular, the Biden administration wants to steer Africa away from nonsustainable fossil fuels and toward a reliance on wind and solar power.

Mr. Biden’s top assistant for Africa, Dana Banks, says the president will focus on “vibrant” Africans who align with democratic principles. Perhaps this partnership-based, values-laden approach will stick. And the next president won’t have to start yet another new initiative for Africa.