Wae Nelson was employed as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace and defense industries for many years, working both as a designer and as a manager in manufacturing. Now he publishes the magazine beloved by local gardeners, Florida Gardening, and pursues his passion for biochar — a diy, scalable technique to both improve horticultural yields and sequester carbon simultaneously.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 16, 2015
Contact:
English: Katherine Paul, 207.653-3090, Katherine@regenerationinternational.org
English: Lauren Stansbury, 402.540.1208, lauren@wearemovementmedia.com
Spanish: Ercilia Sahores, +52 (55) 6257 7901, ercilia@regenerationinternational.org
Organic Regenerative Agriculture Can Ease World Hunger and Reverse Global Warming
On World Food Day, International Experts Say Fossil Fuel Reduction Isn’t Enough; Survival Requires that We Also Restore the Capacity of the World’s Soils to Sequester Carbon and to Feed Vulnerable Populations
WASHINGTON D.C. — The nonprofit organization Regeneration International will hold a press conference today at 9 a.m. at the National Press Club, titled “The Future of Food: From Degeneration to Regeneration.” A panel of 10 international experts on organic agriculture, carbon sequestration and world hunger will speak to the capacity of organic regenerative agriculture to draw excess carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in soil; how regenerative agriculture provides livelihoods for farmers, revitalizes local economies, and produces abundant food for populations most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. For more information about World Food Day, Regeneration International and this press conference, please visit: https://regenerationinternational.org/world-food-day/.
Speakers will include:
A live stream of the conference will be available here: https://regenerationinternational.org/world-food-day-livestream.
“On this World Food Day let us make a collective commitment to make a transition from an industrial agriculture model which has killed 300,000 Indian farmers, contributed 40 percent of GHGs leading to climate change, and created hunger, poverty and disease, to a regenerative agriculture that grows more and healthier food, rejuvenates the soil while reversing climate change, and sows the seeds of democracy and peace,“ said Vandana Shiva.
Ronnie Cummins said: “Regenerative organic food, farming and land use, scaled up globally on billions of acres of farmland, grassland and forests, can feed the world and reverse global warming and deteriorating public health. An international alliance of small farmers, ranchers and indigenous communities, allied with conscious consumers, can literally cool the planet, restore soil health and biodiversity, and move us away from climate catastrophe and societal degeneration.”
André Leu said: “We have good peer-reviewed science showing the scaling up of regenerative organic agriculture can reverse climate change, end the loss of biodiversity, stop the poisoning of our children and planet and very importantly, nourish all people with high quality food.”
Tom Newmark said: “On this World Food Day we face two interlinked planetary challenges: to produce enough food for all people and to sequester enough carbon in the soil to reverse climate change. There is one solution for those challenges: regenerative organic agriculture. We can no longer afford to rely on chemical farming, as the use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides has destroyed soils worldwide and rendered them unable to rebuild soil organic matter. It is now time for people and all governments to embrace the regenerative solution.”
Precious Phiri said: “Around the world, soil is the common currency and the only hope we have to rebuild our local economies, restore dignity and social structures while reversing climate change. We cannot achieve these benefits from the soil using harmful chemicals and heavy machinery. We must promote regenerative organic agriculture, in all communities and cultures around the world.”
Ashley Koff said: “This World Food Day, ask not what your food can do for you, but what our food will do for us all in the decades to come. The answer to whether our food feeds us all for better health lies in the health of our soil, not biotechnologies. Simply, if our soil contains the nutrients our bodies need for better health, so too can our food. Investing in our soil is the best health investment we must all make.”
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Regeneration International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to building a global network of farmers, scientists, businesses, activists, educators, journalists, governments and consumers who will promote and put into practice regenerative agriculture and land-use practices that: provide abundant, nutritious food; revive local economies; rebuild soil fertility and biodiversity; and restore climate stability by returning carbon to the soil, through the natural process of photosynthesis.
During the last half-century, agriculture and food systems lost their way, in the darkness and fog created by corporations that made chemicals for warfare, through myths and paid propaganda – that poisons and synthetic chemicals are necessary to feed the world. For the industry it was a matter of extending their sources of profits long after the war was over. For the planet and people, the costs have been tragically high. 75% of the earth’s biodiversity, soils, water have been destroyed, the climate has been destabilised, farmers have been uprooted, and instead of nourishing us, industrial food has become the biggest cause of disease and ill health.
For all the destruction it causes, the industrial food system produces only 30% of the food eaten by people. If we travel further down that road, we will have a dead planet and no food. We can not eat propaganda; We eat soil, we eat water, we eat biodiversity. And when these vital resources are destroyed, our food security is destroyed.
There is, however, another road to food security. The road that was abandoned by research institutes and governments under the influence of giant chemical corporations (now seed and Biotechnology Corporations). This is the road of agroecology .This is the road with small farms, which still produce 70% of the food in spite of a century of a war against small farms. This is the road that rejuvenates our soils, biodiversity and water systems, that stabilises the climate, that produces health and well being . It is not a road less travelled when looked from the perspective that most people in the world are small farmers, that small farms produce most of the food we eat. Small farms also strengthen local economies instead of extracting profits for the few.
It is only less travelled in the dominant paradigm, in the fantasy created by corporations to sell their poisons and patented GMOs. In reality, good farming, which produces good food, is based on the care of the soil and on the intensification of biodiversity and ecological processes. An industrial model of food production is neither efficient nor sustainable. It is not efficient because it uses ten units of inputs – largely fossil fuel based – to produce one single unit of food. This ineffective and inefficient system is destroying ecosystems and the planet, as well as creative, meaningful and dignified work in agriculture. This is why it is not sustainable. It eats into the ecological foundations of agriculture.
Even tough the evidence is clear that ecological farming produces more and better food, using fewer resources, and rejuvenating soil, biodiversity and water in the process, corporate spin doctors continue to fog our thinking about the future of food and farming with new propaganda – “sustainable intensification”, “smart agriculture”, “climate smart agriculture”. This is nothing more than spin, another attempt to hide the failures of their technology and a push to keep agriculture addicted to their toxic, and carcinogenic, chemicals. Dependence on toxic chemicals and GMOs is ecologically and economically non sustainable for the earth and people.
It is ecologically non sustainable because it is destroying soil integrity and soil fertility. Any agriculture system that destroys fertile soils is non sustainable because soil is the foundation of agriculture. Contrary to PR claims, industrial monocultures use more land to produce less food, bad food. They produce nutritionally empty commodities, most of which go to biofuel and animal feed. Only 10% of the corn and soya is used directly as human food. This is not, by any stretch, a food system.It is also economically non-sustainable because it is based on 10 times more costs of inputs- such as chemicals fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, and GMO and nonrenewable seeds – than the returns farmers are getting from what they produce. It is designed to trap farms in debt, remove them from the landand appropriate their assets. And it is not working . A recent example is the failure of 60% of the Bt cotton in Punjab driving 15 farmers to suicide.[1]
Pesticides and GMO Bt Cotton were supposed to control pests. Instead they have created new pest epidemics never seen before. Pesticides and Bt are pest creating technologies, not pest control technologies. The excuse used to push Bt technology was pest control and reduced pesticide use – it has, quite clearly, failed miserably.
Organic farming is the alternative that gets rid of poisons and pests. On our recent Soil Pilgrimage we saw fields of desi organic cotton completely pest free -brimming, instead, with life. The Punjab experience of failure of Bt should help in the transition to an Organic India 2020. And it should stop the insane proposal of putting Bt in straight varieties, which will endanger resilient native varieties by putting the pest creating trait into India’s desi varieties.
Poisons are poisons. And they are not controlling pests. Chemical intensive, external input intensive, capital intensive agriculture is “non sustainable intensification”, not “sustainable intensification” because it is cannibalising the land and the farmer.
What is being referred to as “Smart Agriculture” and “Climate Smart Agriculture” is designed to make farmers and society dumb by giving up their intelligence, their knowledge, their skills, and then forcing them to buy “data” which becomes yet another external input leading to more dependence on corporations, more control bycorporations, and more failures in agriculture. Data controlled by distant, centralized systems is not the intimate knowledge of the soil, of the biodiversity, of farm animals that an ecological farmer has. After having caused epidemics of food based diseases, the players in the industrial food system are betting on Big data -pushing “Information Obesity”, not knowledge, not intelligence, which are both living, participatory processes. “Climate Smart Agriculture” is actually “Climate Stupid Agriculture”. It is the next hasty step down the road that leads to guaranteed destruction of the earth and society. And the stupidity is evident in Monsanto’s failing fortunes. Beyond a point, spin and bullying cannot sustain a business.[2]
“Climate Smart Agriculture”, and genetically modified crops are based on seeds pirated from third world peasants. As I have written in Soil, not Oil, 40% of the Green House Gas emissions come from an industrialised, globalised model of agriculture. Having contributed to the creation of the climate crisis, corporations who have profited from industrial agriculture are attempting to turn the climate crisis into an opportunity to control stolen climate resilient seeds and climate data, while attempting to criminalise Climate Resilient, Organic Agriculture. Monsanto now owns the world’s biggest climate data corporation and soil data corporation. Armed with proprietary big data, Monsanto intends to profit from the climate crisis which has already claimed thousands of lives. The worse it gets, the better it is for Monsanto; mitigating the crisis would not be profitable to climate deniers like Monsanto.
1500 patents on Climate Resilient crops have been taken by corporations like Monsanto. Navdanya/Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, have published the list in the report “Biopiracy of Climate Resilient Crops: Gene Giants Steal Farmers Innovation”. With these very broad patents, corporations like Monsanto can prevent access to climate resilient seeds in the aftermath of climate disasters through patents – which grant an exclusive right to produce, distribute, sell the patented product. Climate resilient traits are not created through genetic engineering, they are pirated from seeds farmers have evolved over generations.
For thousands of years farmers, especially women, have evolved and bred seed – freely in partnership with each other and with nature, to further increase the diversity of that which nature has given us and adapt it to the needs of different cultures. Biodiversity and cultural diversity have mutually shaped one another over time.
Along coastal areas, farmers have evolved flood tolerant and salt tolerant varieties of rice – such as “Bhundi”, “Kalambank”, “Lunabakada”, “Sankarchin”, “Nalidhulia”, “Ravana”,”Seulapuni”,”Dhosarakhuda”. After the Orissa Supercyclone Navdanya could distribute 2 trucks of salt tolerant rices to farmersbecause we had conserved them as a commons in our community seed bank.
Every seed is an embodiment of millennia of nature’s evolution and centuries of farmers’ breeding. It is the distilled expression of the intelligence of the earth and intelligence of farming communities. Farmers have bred seeds for diversity, resilience, taste, nutrition, health, and adaption to local agro-ecosystems. In times of climate change we need the biodiversity of farmers varieties to adapt and evolve. Climate extremes are being experienced through more frequent and intense cyclones which bring salt water to the land. For resilience to cyclones we need salt tolerant varieties, and we need them in the commons.
The Intelligent , responsible road to the future of food and farming is based on the deep awareness that the earth, the farmers, and all people are intelligent beings. And we grow food sustainably through care for the soil and the seed, not through exploitation and privatised profits. If we can look through the degenerate Public Relations Fog, we can find our way to the road that will ensure we rejuvenate the planet, we regenerate the soil, and we ensure the well being of all.
Sources
[1] “Whitefly destroys 2/3rd of Punjab’s cotton crop, 15 farmers commit suicide“, by Subodh Varma & Amit Bhattacharya, October 8 2015[2] “5 Reasons Monsanto Is Crashing and Burning,” by Eric Blair, October 7, 2015
Outreach video to ranchers in northern Mexico. Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory collaborates with private landowners there to support working ranches and improve grassland habitat for birds and other wildlife.
Watch More Videos on Bird Conservancy of the Rockies’s Youtube Channel
For decades now mankind has been at the fore in creating a vicious cycle with critical environmental consequences as a result. By degrading the atmosphere with greenhouse gas emissions, land degradation has risen. This in turn is worsening the degradation of the atmosphere. Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations have been increasing for some two centuries, mostly a result of human activities, spearheaded primarily by the rapid rise of industrialization. The degradation of land, however, through unviable agricultural practices also has resulted in emissions of greenhouse gases. As governments, NGOs and corporations around the globe set limits on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by automobiles, factories and power plants into the atmosphere, a way to “recycle” CO2 into the ground, carbon sequestration, has received less attention and international support. Little recognized is the fact that the world’s soils hold more organic carbon than that held by the atmosphere as CO2 and vegetation combined (see Fig. 1). Carbon sequestration is the process by which CO2 sinks (both natural and artificial) remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, primarily as plant organic matter in soils. Soil carbon sequestration is an important and immediate sink for removing atmospheric carbon dioxide and mitigating global warming and climate change. Organically managed soils can convert carbon dioxide from a greenhouse gas into a food-producing asset. Combined with sequestration in non-agricultural soil, the potential for land to hold carbon and act as a sink for greenhouse gases is unparalleled. This should help put a new value on land, the value of its capability to sequester and to literally “breathe in” the excess blanket of CO2 and help cool the planet. And when mixed with water and sun, CO2 enriches the soil, giving life to trees and vegetation, which then can generate more carbon sinks.
Download the Fact Sheet from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
Author: Jeff Biggers
Ever since my son was diagnosed with a rare ocular syndrome and retinal scarring last winter, I have found myself returning to the promise of regeneration — in our stories, our health and our ecosystems.
When it comes to our health, the potential for regenerative medicine seems to be growing. I have plowed through reams of scientific studies in stages of despair and encouragement that this growing field may hold hope for “regenerating damaged tissues and organs in the body,” according to the National Institutes of Health, “by stimulating previously irreparable organs to heal themselves.”
Regenerative medicine institutes abound in the U.S. and abroad, specializing in eye and heart diseases, tissue replacement to organs affected by cancer. Global demand for stem cells has created a multi-billion dollar market. Japan’s government recently kicked in $1.7 billion for its regenerative medicine industry.
Recent breakthroughs in stem cell research, such as last summer’s study by the Oregon Health and Science University on patient-specific embryonic stem cells and therapeutic cloning, make headlines regularly now.
But my son Massimo’s future depends not only on these huge investments in regenerative medicine; his generation needs a similar investment in regenerating our ravaged ecosystems. Facing the silent tsunamis of climate change and environmental destruction, my son’s planet is as scarred and imperiled as his sight.
Tony Lovell will explain the reasoning behind how more green growing plants means more captured carbon dioxide — more water — more production — more biodiversity — more profit. Did you know that a 1% change in soil organic matter across just one-quarter of the World’s land area could sequester 300 billion tonnes of physical CO2.
TEDxDubbo focused attention on what we call FACETS — Food, Agriculture, Climate, Energy, Topsoil and Sustainability. These FACETS are actually potent ideas shared by everyday people with an interest in these disciplines. In many of these topics there is an awareness campaign; the aim of bringing our community together united against catastrophic failures in our food-chain, environment and health. It is worth mentioning that we are also indebted to our natural systems for our economic wealth. Failures in Food, Agriculture, Climate, Energy, Topsoil and Sustainability are not just a local issue — they are a global concern.
Author: Tom Karwin
We have seen a surge of interest, recently, in soil regeneration as a substantial part of the global response to climate change.
Briefly, soil regeneration (or carbon farming) involves practices that reduce the loss of carbon from the soil and draw atmospheric carbon into the soil. These practices can counteract the disruption of nature’s carbon cycle caused by modern practices such as burning fossil fuels and pursuing “conventional” methods of commercial agriculture and livestock operations.
The greatest positive effects of carbon farming are realized when these practices are applied to hundreds of acres, but home gardeners also can combat climate change by carbon farming on their own patch of land.
Adopting these enlightened practices entitles the gardener to claim the status of Citizen of the Earth. But wait — there’s more. Carbon farming also improves the overall health of the garden, increases the retention of moisture, reduces workloads and avoids the costs of garden chemicals.
The basic idea is to support the vitality of the top few inches of the soil, where most of a plant’s roots find nutrition for the plant and where we have the microbiome, the vast population of beneficial bacteria and fungi that is essential to healthy plants.
International experts will convene on World Food Day, Friday, October 16, to promote ideas and policy changes based on some of the latest evidence showing how transitioning to organic regenerative agriculture and land use practices have the capacity to reverse climate change by drawing carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestering it in the soil. At the same time, these practices can return stewardship of the land to local farmers and communities, thus strengthening local economies and alleviating hunger among those populations that are most at risk from climate-related disasters.
WHAT: International Press Conference: “The Future of Food: From Degeneration to Regeneration”
WHEN: World Food Day, Friday, October 16, 9 a.m. – 11 a.m.
WHERE: Holeman Lounge, National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20045
WHO: Speakers will include:
• Vandana Shiva (India: Navdanya)
• Christophe Malvezin (France: Agricultural Counselor, Embassy of France in the US)
• Ronnie Cummins (US: Organic Consumers Association)
• Tom Newmark (US: The Carbon Underground)
• Andre Leu (Australia: IFOAM Organics International)
• Precious Phiri (Africa: Africa Center for Holistic Management)
• Ashley Koff (US: Ashley Koff Approved)
• Will Allen (US: Cedar Circle Farm, VT)
• Debbie Barker (US: Center for Food Safety)
LIVE STREAM: https://regenerationinternational.org/world-food-day-livestream
A limited number of free media passes are available for an evening reception at Restaurant Nora, 7-9pm. Please RSVP to Katherine Paul, katherine@regenerationinternational.org.
Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association and Dr. Vandana Shiva of Navdanya, discuss how the newly formed Regeneration International Communication Network will help to promote the benefits of regenerative organic agriculture and counter the growing global push for industrial agriculture based on GMOs and the increased use of toxic pesticides and fertilizers.
Ronnie Cummins:
The governments and large businesses of world are failing to solve the climate crisis, failing to solve the crisis of poverty, the crisis of environmental degradation, the crisis of values and ethics. If governments and corporations can’t solve the problem, we the people are going to have to solve the problem.
Vandana Shiva:
What we are talking about, is regenerating a new democracy, regenerating new economies, regenerating agriculture which is at the heart of the problem, but can be heart of solution. Everyone eats, most people in world are farmers, so this is an invitation to everyone to join. Everyone loves freedom, rather than being controlled by fraudulent and criminal corporations.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FslSyYMXvE[/embedyt]