Author: Rachel Kastner | Published on: July 13, 2016

This is an edited and revised transcript of the author’s presentation to the Center for Global Justice, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in August 2014.

Thank you to the Center for Global Justice for hosting us today. My passion and life’s work is regenerative agriculture and I am here today to share with you a message of hope: how farmers can reverse global climate change. I’ve been learning about and working with organic agriculture over the past seven years. I was born and raised in rural Oklahoma and moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico four years ago. I studied International Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. After graduating from university, I spent a year working in rural South Africa where I first experienced agriculture being used as an avenue for social and environmental change. Since that time, about seven years ago, I’ve dedicated myself to studying and employing organic and regenerative agriculture. It’s been a learning experience for me, and I’m fortunate enough to be able to partner and work with a local organization here in San Miguel, called Vía Orgánica. Most of you probably know Vía Orgánica as a local store and restaurant in Centro San Miguel. Via Organica’s mission is education and supporting the organic movement here in Mexico. Later on I’ll be sharing a little bit more about what we do on an educational level in San Miguel.

I am here to share with you how regenerative organic agriculture is a game-changing solution for global climate change. Regenerative agriculture, modeled after natural systems, has the potential to reverse climate change by drawing billions of tons of carbon out the atmosphere, and locking it down to the soil, where a lot of it came from, and where it belongs.

Most of us know the gloom and doom story of the industrial food system. We know it as the culprit responsible for deforestation, environmental degradation, soil loss, pollution of our waterways, pollution of our food, large companies destroying local food markets and in the end making our environment, animals, farmers and consumers sick. What many people may not know is how greatly our global food system is contributing to annual greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change. The entire global food sector is responsible for over half of global greenhouse gas emissions. Agricultural food production accounts for 11%-15% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Land-use changes and deforestation – lands and fields being cleared, forests being cut down and native prairies being tilled to produce food –contribute 15%-18% annually. Processing and transportation contribute of food contribute 15%-20% and 3% to 4% of emissions are due to the waste stream produced by the global food system.

When talking about climate and the food system, agriculture is often seen as a necessary enemy. We know industrial agriculture creates negative effects on our environment and also on consumers’ health, yet it’s often not openly recognized and talked about as being a major contributor to climate change. There are a few reasons the harm caused by the industrial agricultural system is not openly talked about. One is that the global industrial farming industry has bought many politicians, universities and global world leaders. And the second reason is the sense of fear, that we have to keep producing food this way in order to feed the world. If we look at the science and the research comparing conventional and organic agriculture’s productivity we see that organic systems produce equal to or more food than conventional systems and have far more benefits for the environment, farmers, consumers and food security. The industrial farming system is not necessary to feed the world. So, let’s talk about how agriculture can be a solution to climate change instead of the culprit.

We know that we have to stop emitting greenhouse gases, and at the same time we must reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. The reality is that these transitions are not happening fast enough. We must reduce the amount of carbon that’s currently in our atmosphere, and we have to do it very quickly. It is estimated greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere are currently at a level of 400 parts per million. Largely, scientists have agreed that we need to reduce this number to 350 parts per million to avoid catastrophic climate change events.

So, how are we going to get this carbon out of the atmosphere? We’re going to do it by creating a global movement to regenerative, organic agricultural production systems; systems that remove the carbon causing global climate change from the atmosphere and return it to the soil where it belongs.

What is regenerative, organic agriculture? Organic agriculture can be defined as production systems that do not use synthetic chemicals, fertilizers, and genetically modified organisms. Organic is qualified by the absence of harmful substances. Regenerative agriculture goes a step further than organic standards and designs agriculturally productive systems that model natural ecosystems and regenerate their own nutrients. These regenerative agricultural methods, because of their ecological and biological focus, also regenerate degraded or depleted ecosystems into productive, stable, biologically diverse food production systems. In the words of a visionary farmer: regenerative organic agriculture is “Farming like the Earth matters.” Regenerative agriculture recognizes the important connections between plants, soil microorganisms and carbon in the atmosphere. This connection between plants, microorganisms and carbon is the key to how regenerative agriculture is a solution to climate change.

Plants through the process of photosynthesis draw carbon out of the atmosphere. A portion of this this carbon energy absorbed by the plant is used for aboveground plant growth and some of this carbon is respired, or exhaled, back into the atmosphere. Around 20% to 40% of the carbon absorbed by the plant is transferred into the soil as “liquid carbon” primarily in the form of sugars. The plants emit these sugars into the soil through their root systems. These sugars play an incredibly important role in the soil as they are food for the billions of soil microorganisms. As microorganisms in the soil feed on this carbon sugar they stabilize the carbon in the soil and create nutrients for the plants. The sugars released by plant roots also help improve soil structure, increasing its capacity to hold and filter water. As carbon moves from the atmosphere through plant roots and is then processed by microorganisms some of this carbon becomes stabilized and “locked” beneath the soil’s surface for years to come. The soil thus functions as a carbon sink. When we begin to recognize the earth’s soil as our largest available carbon sink we see that how we manage the Earth’s soil could lead us out of the climate crisis. Every green plant, tree and grass has the ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere and store it into the soil, long-term. The healthier the plants and soil biological communities are the more carbon is sequestered. This means large-scale carbon sequestration at our fingertips and what we need are agricultural systems that move this carbon underground.

We’ve known about carbon sequestration via plants for a many years. That’s why we’ve been talking about reforestation as one of the solutions to global climate change. As we learn more about how healthy plant and soil interactions can remove large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere we see this has huge implications for sequestering large amounts of carbon when applied not only in forest systems but in in agricultural systems including annual production and grazing systems.

In a short video by an organization called Kiss the Ground, which is a partner of Regeneration International, and also the Organic Consumers Association, we learn more about the relationship between soil and carbon sequestration. The video, The Soil Story, is a fantastic explanation of the soil carbon cycle. And it encapsulates the message of hope with regard to agriculture and climate change.

In the video we learn how the soil is a natural system that sequesters carbon. I want to talk about what that actually looks like in large scale farming systems, and also what rolling this movement out on a global scale looks like. It’s important to look at some of the numbers. The Earth’s soil currently holds 2,500 billion tons of carbon. The atmosphere holds 800 billion tons and plant and animal life hold 650 billion tons. Scientists estimate that, since the dawn of agriculture, we’ve released 50% to 70% of the original carbon stock in our soils up into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. The Earth’s soil is a massive carbon sink, and we have the potential of returning carbon back to the soil. After all humans released half of the soil carbon into the atmosphere. This is a half-empty carbon sink is readily available to us. When we compare soil carbon sequestration to other geo-engineering carbon sequestration techniques, we see that soil carbon sequestration is a more readily available, economic, and scalable, solution.

So how much carbon sequestration are we talking about? By measuring carbon sequestered in regenerative agricultural systems, it is estimated that regenerative agriculture could sequester 100% of current human greenhouse gas emissions, or more. According to researchers, if we put the Earth’s four-billion acres of crop lands and pastures, 14-billion acres of rangelands, and 10-billion acres of forests into regenerative agriculture and land management we could reduce our atmospheric carbon concentration to 350 parts per million in under five years. So we would be pulling 50 parts per million of carbon out of our atmosphere in under five years. This would be an ideal situation where the entire world would stop exactly what they’re doing, and turn over to regenerative agriculture.

By looking at this ideal situation, we can see the scale and importance of how much carbon could be sequestered through regenerative agriculture and land management. A third of the Earth’s surface is arable land and the majority is under agricultural production. The oceans are not available to absorb any more carbon; carbon is acidifying our oceans as it is. Our largest available natural resource for carbon sequestration is the soil. Farmers are already using carbon sequestering farming methods worldwide. The scientific and global communities are beginning to pay attention to the research that’s coming out of these systems. Regenerative agriculture systems not only are a solution to the problem of climate change, but also have a domino effect of beneficial changes for local communities, economies, and the environment.

Elements of Regenerative Agriculture

What do regenerative farming methods look like, and what are farmers using today on a large scale to do this kind of farming? One of the regenerative farming techniques used is no-till, or minimum till agriculture. Currently in the United States, 20% to 40% of all farms uses no-till agriculture. No-till agriculture uses tractors and implements to sow seed and harvest in a way that does not turn up or open the soil surface. This minimum soil disturbance releases very little if any, carbon that is stored in the soil as well as reduces soil erosion and increases soil organic material. The soil surface cover is maintained and soil structure is left intact. No-till systems have several beneficial effects. Because the soil is left intact carbon in the soil, in the form of organic material and microorganisms, does not become oxidized and is not released into the atmosphere. The soil structure that remains intact helps hold water in the soil making rainfall and irrigation more efficient. The microbial life that’s in the soil, instead of being oxidized and killed by tillage, remains alive in the soil, and forms beneficial relationships with plant roots, creating nutrients for crops and sequestering more carbon. With no-till agriculture the crop residue is left on the soil surface and acts as a mulch, conserving soil moisture. The roots from the crop decay and further feed microbial life in the soil increasing soil nutrition, structure and water infiltration.

As I was saying, up to 40% of agriculture in the United States uses the no-till approach. Why? This has primarily been put into place through natural resource and conservation agencies in the United States for the purpose of soil conservation. When a field is tilled and then rains come, a percentage of the topsoil washes off of the field, into lakes and rivers. Farmers are finding that their rain and irrigation go further when they leave the soil untilled. Many farmers have turned to no till because of drought.

In the past five years, the Midwest has seen severe droughts. Farmers have experienced that no-till systems dramatically improve the water-holding capacity of their soil. A disadvantage of the industrial agricultural system using a no-till agriculture is that it’s not organic. Non-organic no-till systems rely heavily on herbicides to remove weeds. If the soil is not being tilled you have to control weeds through other methods. In non-organic systems soils are drenched with herbicides, which then wash into local water systems, contaminating ground water, lakes and streams. In regenerative organic no-till systems other methods such as roller crimpers, cover crops and animals are used to manage weeds.

Another essential element of regenerative agriculture is that it recognizes the soil as a biologically active, living organism, and it acknowledges that these microorganisms are essential for carbon sequestration. No-till agriculture is one step in the right direction. However, if you apply large amounts of synthetic herbicides and chemicals to the soil it largely reduces soil microorganisms and therefore reduces carbon sequestration. Microorganisms in soils are killed off by synthetic inputs such as synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. The microbial life in the soil can’t coexist with these inputs. In order to have healthy microbiological ecosystems in the soil, we have to give them the proper environment in which to live, that is, an environment that does not use pesticides and herbicides.

Crop diversity and agroforestry constitute another method of regenerative agriculture. Photo 1 (above) demonstrates this method on a large scale. The farmer is Mark Shepard of Wisconsin. On his 106-acre regenerative agroforestry farm, Mark harvests many crops including, fruits, nuts, vegetables, grains, honey, pork and trees. Systems like this, as you can see, don’t look like corn farms in Iowa; they look more like natural systems.

One of the greatest public misconceptions is that, “Organic agriculture cannot feed the world.” We know through research that this is simply not true. The international community is really coming out and saying, “Organic agriculture can feed the world”. And in fact, these regenerative agricultural systems are more resilient, they provide better food security for local global communities, and it’s scalable.

We see Mark Shepherd applying large scale regenerative agriculture, and there are many other large-scale, regenerative farmers who are implementing designs like this throughout the world, including here in Mexico. These farmers understand natural biological systems and many of them are also very good business people, who understand how to make multiple businesses off of one farm. This approach is improving the environment, improving local communities’ economies, and it’s an essential way to move forward.

Perennial grasses and crops: when we have greater root systems, we have more sugars going down to the soil, we have higher micro-organism communities in the soil, and we have higher carbon sequestration. We must take care of our grasslands and rangelands to ensure they are not overgrazed, and that they’re not under-grazed. Grasslands need animals moving across them to properly fertilize them, stimulate plant growth and in return create more grass and larger root systems. The grasslands are an ecology depend on animals moving across them. The important aspect here is that the animals are properly managed in a way that restores grasslands instead of destroys them

The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, is doing groundbreaking and tedious work to breed a perennial grain crops for human consumption. They have already successfully created one grain, called Kernza. Kernza is a perennial grain, meaning it doesn’t need to be cultivated, and produces a grain for human consumption. The Land Institute is making great strides to create more regenerative crops; although they’re still several years down the road from making Kernza an extremely palatably grain. They’re working on breeding more desirable qualities into the lines.

The planned rotational grazing of livestock for regenerative land management is essential for sequestering carbon on a large scale. Cattle and other livestock are often identified as the culprits behind land degradation. Land conservationists have for many years been trying to get cattle off of land in order to preserve it. What we’re seeing now is that properly managed livestock can not only preserve grasslands but can be used to restore degraded ecosystems. It’s all in how the animals are managed on the land. Photo 2 (above) shows a dry, desert environment. On the left side of the picture, notice the amount of ground cover and biological diversity. On the right side, you see basically bare ground, and exposed soil. The landscape on the right is continually losing soil, and there’s obviously no fodder for animals. The conditions on the left were created by properly managing cattle through intensive rotational grazing.

In the 1960’s Zimbabwean, wildlife biologist and farmer Allan Savory, realized that land degraded landscapes could be restored to health by strategically moving large groups of animals across the land. Allen came to this conclusion by observing how elephants moved across the savannah in large, tightly packed groups that didn’t return to the same graze lands until the grass had time to recuperate. Allen began working with conservationists to manage animals in a way that mimicked their natural behaviors and discovered that degraded ecosystems quickly regenerated due to the beneficial impact of animals on the land. Allen founded the Savory Institute and developed a management system, Holistic Management, to teach farmers how to beneficially graze livestock. Holistic Management is being used across the globe and is creating astounding results. The grazing animals’ manure is a biological startup for the soil providing nutrients, moisture and a layer of protection, creating a desirable environment for seed germination and plant growth. According to the Savory institute, one third of the earth’s surface is in grasslands and 70% of these grasslands are currently degraded. Now that we know how important soil is for carbon sequestration, we see how important it is to use animals to restore grasslands and increase sequestration.

Another method of regenerative agriculture is compost application. Recent research has shown that a single application of a half-inch layer of compost on grazed rangelands increases forage production by 40% to 70%, increases soil water-holding capacity to up to 26,000 liters per hectare, and increases soil carbon sequestration by at least one ton per hectare per year for 30 years, without reapplication. So again, when we talk about scaling this movement up, and how significant this could be if we took half an inch of compost, and applied this on a large amount of land?  The results are one ton more, per year, per hectare of carbon sequestration.

How does compost help sequester more carbon? The compost that’s applied to the soil surface activates the biological community below the soil as well as, adds organic matter to the soil increasing nutrients and water retention. Again we see that if we improve soil health we sequester more carbon. This cycle creates a system that regenerates nutrients through the interaction of plants and microorganisms. It’s a whole secured system that’s feeding itself.

This all sounds great, right? I want you to know that this is not just a theoretical solution. The use of large scale regenerative food production is happening. Over 2,000 farmers in Eastern, Southern and Western Australia have adapted a method known as pasture cropping. Pasture cropping is an agricultural system where annual crops are sown directly into perennial grasses using no tillage. The perennial grass acts as a cap or mulch on the soil, holding in moisture and carbon. The roots of the perennial grasses are continually pulling carbon down into the soil. This system functions with the strategic use of livestock to eat down the perennial grasses before sewing an annual crop. Crops such as corn and wheat are sown directly into perennial grass pastures. The annual crop grows well in the carbon and nutrient-rich soil, which have thriving bacteria and fungi because the soil is never tilled. And you also have grass to bring your animals back into graze after the annual grain harvest.

Pasture cropping is also gaining popularity in the United States. It was pioneered by Australian farmers who were dealing with highly degraded lands and little rainfall. Pasture cropping has proven to be as productive and in most cases far more productive than industrial farming methods.

The Savory Institute presents a photo contrasting the same piece of land before and after introducing regenerative management. A photo of totally degraded and desertified landscape in Mexico in 1963, is compared with a photo of the same location in 2003. Between these photos the land was put into holistic management and the rotational grazing of cattle alone was used to regenerate the area. The contrast between the photos is incredible. The same piece of land is barely recognizable. If this piece of land had been left as it was in 1963, it would have degraded even further into soil erosion and would still be a bare decertified space. The picture of the land in 2003 shows a lush green area full of a diversity of plants trees and shrubs. Thanks to the work of the Allan Savory this method of regenerating landscapes through the proper management of animals is being used all throughout the world. The Savory Institute’s goal is to have one billion acres in holistic grazing by 2025. They know degraded landscapes contribute to global warming and they are strategically spreading Holistic Management as a way to sequester carbon and restore landscapes.

The Benefits of Regenerative Agriculture

Regenerative Agriculture is not only solution to climate change but has many extending benefits for our world and society. One of the largest environmental benefits of regeneratively managed lands is their water-holding capacity is greatly increased. We’ve seen in recent years, global climate change is happening: droughts and dramatic flooding are affecting communities and agricultural production all over the world. Rainfall is changing, becoming more sporadic and clean drinking water is becoming harder to find. When soils are regeneratively managed they hold and filter rainwater more effectively, increasing productivity and reducing runoff and soil erosion. The water that infiltrates through the soil more effectively reaches below ground water sources. This has a large potential to alleviate the global water crisis as it is today.

Here are some numbers on how that water-holding capacity is increased: we can measure soil carbon, and we can measure water-holding capacity and water recharge. A 1% increase in soil carbon increases water holding capacity  to 27,000 gallons of water per acre. Multiplied over thousands of acres throughout the world that adds up to a lot of water!

Regenerative production systems in comparison to industrial production systems are far more resistant to fluctuations in climate and rainfall, have more resistance against pests and diseases and are more often more productive. Healthy biological soils have higher nutrient and mineral values which grow crops with a greater concentration of nutrients.

It’s true that if you take synthetic nitrogen and you pour it on a plant in the soil, that plant takes the nitrogen up, grows and creates fruit. However, the nutrient quality of the fruit produced from the plant only given synthetic inputs is much less than that of a plant grown in a biologically rich and healthy soil. A healthy soil not only provides the plant essential nutrients that it needs to grow, but it’s also providing the plant nutrients which then transfer to the fruit we eat. The industrial food system can get by creating fruit by just giving a plant enough of these essential nutrients to create a perfect, red, plump apple. When we look at the nutrient content of that apple however, we find that it’s largely degraded from what it was 50 years ago on our grandparents’ farm.

So when we talk about food security issues, creating nutrient-dense food is absolutely essential. Regenerative systems are creating foods with higher nutrient values as well as farms that are more resilient in the face of climate change. Natural systems – like forests, wetlands, or prairies – are so biologically diverse that they have the capacity to recuperate and regenerate after catastrophic climate events. A regenerative food system is resilient in the face of global climate change and can absorb changes in climate because they function as ecosystems not as monocultures. The soil microorganisms create more favorable conditions for plants to be able to recuperate and grow. Heirloom seeds pass down environmental information, from plant generation to plant generation, about changing climates and changing temperatures. In contrast, industrial food systems which relies on industrial inputs, specialized seed, fertilizer, herbicide and pesticide, are not resilient to changes in inputs or climates.

There’s more good news. Regenerative agriculture not only has environmentally positive impacts, but it also has the potential to end global poverty and hunger. The social and economic benefits of regenerative agriculture include, healthy food for local communities as toxic pesticides, herbicides, and genetically modified organisms are removed from food and environments. It’s simply providing people with clean healthy food.

These farm systems also restructure the global food system, returning work to small farmers. Smaller farms generate a significant economic multiplier effect in the community, creating real wealth beyond the agricultural business. Regenerative farming systems demand more skilled labor, the diversification of farming enterprises, and improve the economic resilience of farming operations through diversified production. It’s about taking our food system out of the hands of large corporate, agricultural companies and returning it to communities and farmers. We’re talking about large-scale regenerative farms that feed the world and are owned by individuals and communities rather than corporations.

The Problem of Scale

So how are we going to scale up our global food system using regenerative agriculture? The studies that have been conducted measuring carbon sequestration in soils and the extending benefits of Regenerative Agriculture are being heard on a global level. For the first time, in December 2015, at the UN Climate Summit in Paris, agriculture was on the agenda as a major solution for climate change.

One of the agreements that came out of the Paris-Lima Agreements in December 2015 is the “4 per 1,000” initiative, proposed by the French Ministry of Agriculture. It suggests that a 4% annual growth rate of soil carbon would make it possible to stop the present increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Many countries have signed on to the “4 per 1,000” agreement, including Mexico. We have governments diving in saying, “How do we make this possible? We see the potential for drawing down the amount of carbon dioxide; let’s make it happen. Let’s get it into practice.”

Developing the Change Makers

Another necessary step in scaling this movement up is to stop subsidizing the degenerative agriculture industry, and incentivize regenerative agriculture. Researchers are focusing on how we can best measure the amount of carbon being sequestered in soils. We are also creating definitions for what methods of production qualify regenerative agriculture. This is being developed as we speak, so that we can qualify “Regenerative farms”. In the future farmers will be able to be certified “Regenerative” and have clear standards of production. We will measure how many tons of carbon the farmer returns to the soil annually, and farmers will receive carbon credits for doing the global service of pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, and at the same time, farmers and consumers will benefit from healthier ecosystems and food.

There’s a lot of research to be done in the area of measuring carbon sequestration. As with any biological system, it doesn’t come in a nice neat package of exactly how to measure carbon, but the studies are being done, the work is being developed. So who’s going to carry out this transition? Small farmers.

Currently, small farmers grow 70% of the world’s food on 25% of the world’s land. So when I talk about going back to the small farmers, this is still within our reach. We’ve seen small farms disappear in the United States, but globally speaking small farmers are still there, and a lot of them still have land. Many of these small farmers are subsistence farmers who are producing food but are struggling to survive. Smaller farms and conscious consumers have the potential to feed the planet.

In order to build this movement we need to connect all the dots. The great thing about what we see coming together right now with the regenerative agriculture movement is that not just soil conservationists or permaculture hippies who are into this idea. All across the board, activists for health, environment, justice, peace and democracy are saying, “Hey, this is a real solution, we’re going to start talking to our governments about it, and we’re going to start developing global initiatives and programs to address it.” Each one of you has your place in this movement, as well.

Part of our strategy must be to recognize that, as I mentioned earlier, we’re currently subsidizing degenerative agricultural systems. One of the biggest threats to a regenerative agriculture system is the hold that corporate farms and factory farms have. The amount of livestock produced in industrial factory farms by far controls the market in the Americas and in Europe. It’s time for consumers to hold factory farms accountable for the damage they do to our environment, to animals and our health. It’s time consumers and governments say, “we’re not allowing this anymore” Ranchers and cattle-raisers can be our greatest allies in the fight against climate change. There are beautiful relationships forming all over the Midwest, in the United States, of environmentalists and ranchers coming together, learning techniques for proper animal management on grasslands. Farmers make more money, because they have healthier grasses, are able to put more animals on their land, and their lands are healthier, are protected against erosion and are sequestering more carbon.

We also need to push the organic community to go beyond the minimum of the organic standards. Just because an agricultural system is organic, doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily regenerative. True organic farmers know these regenerative methods, and they’ve been using them- minimum tillage, cover cropping, rotation of crops, etc. However, organic standards don’t necessarily include regenerative practices, so we need to push the organic community to start recognizing and start measuring more ecological standards. Yes, these production systems are organic, but are they regenerative? Are they healthy for the environment? We need to make sure production systems aren’t degrading our soils in any way.

Become a leader in the movement. Every time we eat at a restaurant, every time we buy food for our family, every time we have a lawn or a garden we make choices that support degenerative or regenerative systems. This movement is global, and it involves all of us. So, I urge you to become a leader in this movement, wherever you are.

The climate movement offers doom and gloom news, and what we need is hope that we can reverse climate change. If regenerative agriculture is scaled up to the potential that it has, we’re talking about pulling more carbon out of the atmosphere than we are emitting, which would be bringing our carbon dioxide levels down annually, reversing the effects of global climate change. I haven’t heard of any other climate solution that has offered us that potential as well as a long list of other benefits to the environment and to humans.

It is absolutely necessary that this movement become globalized, replicated on large amounts of land very quickly. A new initiative, launched at the climate talks in Paris this past December, is an organization called Regeneration International, which is a group of world leaders in various environmental movements who have come together to solve problems in agriculture and climate change. Some of the founding members are Ronnie Cummins from the Organic Consumer Association, Vandana Shiva, Andre Leu from IFOAM Organics International, Hans Herren from the Millennium Institute, and Steve Rye from Mercola.com. We have major political and global leaders, who are from all different sectors — the health sector, the agricultural sector, the environmental sector — all coming together to say regenerative agriculture needs to be heard, focused on, developed, and rolled out on a large scale.

I urge you to go to the Regeneration International webpage. They’ve done an amazing job at collecting articles, research, videos and information surrounding agriculture, climate, health, and the environment. It’s an amazing resource to educate yourself and your community with the latest research and progress.

So, you are part of your movement. As you know, you vote with your dollar. Your political pressure on our politicians, many of whom have been bought by the large agriculture industry, is necessary. It’s time to put pressure on them and say, “Enough is enough.”

There are several ways you can join the movement. In the United States join the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), the a sister organization of Vía Orgánica. OCA is comprised of over two million members. It is an online, grassroots-advocacy group representing organic consumers in the United States. They are very politically active in the United States representing consumers. I urge you to get connected with the OCA, on their webpage and their newsletters.

Vía Orgánica here in Mexico, includes an organic store and restaurant that supports hundreds of local producers, educational programs and an ecological ranch and learning center. Via Organic offers free workshops every week from their location in Centro. They also have a radio program every Tuesday that talks about agriculture, environmental issues, and health. The Via Organic ecological ranch is a model and training center in regenerative organic agriculture. Via Organica is doing very exciting education with urban and rural communities, and is developing international partners in regenerative agriculture.

Regenerate means to give fresh life or vigor, to revitalize, to recreate nature, to cause to be born again. And when we look at the state of our world, the state of our societies, political environments, our environmental state, I think we can all agree that a regenerative approach is absolutely necessary. It’s an exciting message of hope that I’m very grateful to share with you today. Thank you.