From GMOs to Regenerative Agriculture: A Scientist’s Journey

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It’s not often that a scientist will transition from the narrow-focused science of genetically modified crops to the natural systems approach of regenerative agriculture. But that’s what happened to Laura Kavanaugh, who worked as a scientist for biotech company Syngenta for 12 years helping to develop GMO crops. Today, she is the new chief science officer for Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA), which works with farmers to help them transition to regenerative agriculture.

While working at Syngenta, Kavanaugh began to see the problems with the GMO approach.

“We create something as a GMO to try to overcome something in nature, but nature never sleeps,” says Kavanaugh, who has a PhD in genetics and genomics from Duke University. “There are billions of microbes, billions of everything that are eventually going to eventually crack that (GMO) code.”

She realized that the GMO approach wasn’t a good long-term solution because it produces a short-term impact.

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Understanding the Context in Regenerative Agriculture

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Here, the term “regenerative” refers to restoring land, ecosystems, and communities to optimal health, with a focus on soil health, biodiversity, ecosystem functions, human well-being, and the climate. Rooted in Indigenous and peasant knowledge from all over the world and supported by modern science, regenerative agriculture practices involve cultivating an understanding among producers and land stewards, emphasizing soil care and interconnections.

By adopting practices like cover cropping, crop rotation, intercropping, reduced tillage, integrating livestock, and increasing biodiversity, farmers are rebuilding soil fertility, carbon sequestration, and water retention while making their farms more resilient. The benefits extend beyond individual farms, potentially revolutionizing food production, and fostering collaboration between farmers, scientists, and policymakers to promote innovation.

It’s a movement that unites ecosystems, producers, chefs, scientists, and conscious consumers alike. Each blog post in this series peels back the layers of regenerative agriculture, revealing the ten guiding principles of regenerative agriculture that drive Regeneration Canada’s mission.

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A Bold Return to Giving a Damn

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Why did you write the book?

“As I approached 40 years of age my view of how I should treat my land, my herd, and my community radically evolved… in ways that I would never have expected. My perception of what is good land stewardship. and what is good animal welfare, and what is good community service turned upside down. Good land management came to mean giving up utilizing harmful industrial reductionist science tools like pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Good animal welfare came to mean moving from merely not treating animals with cruelty to allowing them to express their instinctive behavior.

Good community development came to mean evolving my hometown [Bluffton, Georgia] from a literal ghost town into a delightful little village. I realized that what I had done was good, and important, and highly replicable. I understood that if I could tell my story to other farmers and ranchers, they too could find the courage to step outside the horribly damaging commodity agricultural production system.I wanted to share my 30-plus-year journey with others who might decide to make the same choice.”

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Mexico’s Corn Defenders Honored with Environmental Prize

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When I arrived in Mexico City nine years ago to research the effort by citizen groups to stop multinational seed companies from planting genetically modified corn in Mexico, the groups had just won an injunction to suspend planting permits. Monsanto and the other companies, supported by the Mexican government at the time, appealed and the farmer, consumer and environmental groups were awaiting a judicial ruling.

I asked their lead lawyer, Rene Sánchez Galindo, how he thought they could hope to overcome the massive economic and legal power of the companies and government. He said with a smile, “The judge surely eats tacos. Everyone here eats tacos. They know maize is different.”

He was right. The next day the judge upheld the precautionary injunction. And he is still right: Ten years after the Demanda Colectiva, a collective of 53 people from 22 organizations, filed their class-action suit to stop GM corn, the precautionary injunction remains in effect despite some 130 company appeals.

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The New Colonialist Food Economy

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This past summer, the global trade regime finalized details for a revolution in African agriculture. Under a pending draft protocol on intellectual property rights, the trade bodies sponsoring the African Continental Free Trade Area seek to lock all 54 African nations into a proprietary and punitive model of food cultivation, one that aims to supplant farmer traditions and practices that have endured on the continent for millennia.

A primary target is the farmers’ recognized human right to save, share, and cultivate seeds and crops according to personal and community needs. By allowing corporate property rights to supersede local seed management, the protocol is the latest front in a global battle over the future of food. Based on draft laws written more than three decades ago in Geneva by Western seed companies, the new generation of agricultural reforms seeks to institute legal and financial penalties throughout the African Union for farmers who fail to adopt foreign-engineered seeds protected by patents, including genetically modified versions of native seeds.

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Regenerative Agriculture Is the New Farming Buzzword, but Few Can Agree on What It Means

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Earlier this year, NSW wine and olive oil producer Sam Statham recieved a phone call from a committed vegan.

The caller was seeking an assurance that animals weren’t used to graze the olive grove and vineyard. But the Stathams regularly agist sheep for exactly that purpose, and as a natural source of fertiliser.

“I had a sudden realisation that some people, not only do they not understand where their food comes from, they also might not understand what an ecosystem is or how nature actually works,” says Statham, who runs the family farm Rosnay Organic near Canowindra in the state’s central west.

It’s the main reason Statham now offers farm tours at Rosnay, which is certified to Australia’s national organic standard. He tries to provide clarity to visitors around the meaning of terms such as organic and regenerative, which are increasingly used to promote supermarket products.

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Exploring the connections between Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture

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Food security is one of a human being’s most basic needs, and the threat of food insecurity causes primal anxiety. Food insecurity is among the main causes of climate-related migration and, in turn, one of the main causes of the growing insecurity of nations.

With these vulnerabilities so raw, it’s no wonder people worldwide are questioning their food supply or that worldwide concern is surging about an industrial food system that feeds climate change and causes political instability – not to mention a system that weakens our immune systems and Nucauses serious nutrition-related health conditions and diseases.

It should also be no surprise that there is rapidly scaling curiosity about alternative food systems that don’t ride roughshod over human rights; about systems that keep people and the planet safe and healthy. And yet it can be confusing to understand the similarities and differences between these alternative systems. Let’s take a look at two approaches: Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture.

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Unlocking the True Potential of Vegetables

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Want to boost your immune system, increase the nutrient content in your food, improve your mental health and detox your body? Fermented vegetables are for you!

Fermentation is the process that occurs when the natural bacteria in a vegetable break down the food’s complex elements into more digestible forms. When fermentation occurs, vegetables become easier to digest, allowing your body to work less, while reaping more benefits. And those benefits include higher levels of available nutrients, and live cultures of pro-biotic bacteria (kind of like the good stuff in yogurt). These pro-biotic bacteria can improve your digestion, boost your immune system, improve your mental health, and detox your body.

Worried that fermenting is risky? No need! Fermented veggies are actually safer than raw vegetables, because the fermentation process actually kills off any unwanted or dangerous bacteria that may exist on the food prior to fermentation. According to the USDA, there has “never been a single case of food poisoning reported from fermented vegetables.”

Fermented foods have been around for eons. Fermentation is an ancient art that pre-dates writing and agriculture.  It’s often considered to be the practice that first ushered our ancient relatives from the natural world, into a culturally driven world. In fact, the word ‘culture’ is another word for fermentation. Sandor Katz, who has written several books on the subject, calls it “a health regimen, a gourmet art, a multicultural adventure, a form of activism, and a spiritual path, all rolled into one.”

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Prime, grass fed — bird friendly? Audubon Society label coming to a meat aisle near you

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Labels that read “prime” or “grass fed” are likely to catch your eye in the meat aisle. What about “bird friendly?”

Beginning this winter, some Minnesota-raised beef will begin featuring a green and white label from the Audubon Society that says just that.

The bird conservation group is expanding a ranch certification program it started in the West in 2017 to the Midwest. It hopes to create consumer demand for bird-friendly ranching practices and, in turn, incentivize ranchers to maintain bird habitats.

Matt Maier was one of the first Minnesota farmers to sign up. He said the conservation ranching program aligns with what he’s already doing with his land in Clearwater, Minn.

When a lot adjacent to his boyhood farm went up for sale, Maier said he jumped at the opportunity to give his kids the kind of childhood memories he cherished.

“And what I witnessed when I moved back to the land [was] insects and birds and butterflies and frogs were non-existent. All the things that I wanted them to experience were not there,” Maier said. “So I’m like, OK, I want to do something about this.”

That something is Thousand Hills Lifetime Grazed, a cattle ranch that taps 1,000 acres of grazing land — 120 of it Maier’s own — to raise cattle in a way that mimics roaming bison.


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Phytonutrients in Meat and the Nutritional Difference Between Grass-Fed vs Grain-Fed

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Dr. Stephan van Vliet joins Chris on Revolution Health Radio to discuss his emerging research on the nutrient profiles of beef raised by various farming methods, including grass-fed grazing, grain-fed, and grain-finished. Dr. van Vliet explains how the nutrient profiles differ between grass-fed and grain-fed cattle, particularly with regard to omega-6 to omega-3 ratios and phytonutrients, what this cutting-edge research means for human health and nutrient density, and how this emerging evidence supports a shift toward more sustainable agriculture.

In this episode, we discuss:

How different grazing practices affect the nutritional composition of meat

The relationship between agricultural sustainability and the nutrient density of meats

The results of Dr. van Vliet’s work in the Beef Nutrient Density Project, which studies the relationship between farming methods and the omega-6 to omega-3 ratios of meat

The types of nutrients that are diminished in feedlot beef vs. grass-fed beef

Whether it is possible to consume phytonutrients, secondary plant compounds, in any significant amount from beef

Factors affecting the ability of the body to absorb phytonutrients from animal sources and what that means for people on carnivorous or vegan diets

How the principles of food synergy and nutritionism demonstrate the body’s preference for nutrients from whole foods

The state of Dr. van Vliet’s research in this field and where it is headed

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