Soil Organic Matter – the Most Critical Cause and Solution to Climate Change

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The current mainstream narrative is that climate change is caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and methane emissions from farm animals. The solution is to reduce fossil use, scale up renewable energy, and eat less, preferably no, meat. I have shown why these ‘solutions’ will not stop climate change in previous articles.

-The Failure of Industrial Climate Solutions

-Response to Criticisms of Regenerative Grazing

-Regenerating Nature-based Systems – The Solution to Cooling the Climate

Skeptics claim there is no evidence that CO2 can cause climate change. Scientists have researched how CO2 drives atmospheric energy increases. NASA launched the IRIS satellite in 1970 to measure infrared radiation. Infrared is part of the spectrum of solar radiation that makes heat. The Japanese Space Agency launched the IMG satellite in 1996, which recorded similar observations. The data found decreased radiation returning to space at the infrared wavelength bands where CO2 absorbs energy. This radiation was being reflected and absorbed across the atmosphere. The measurements were direct evidence that proved the increase in heat and energy absorbed and radiated by CO2. 1

Subsequent research using more recent satellite data has confirmed these results. Since 1750, the start of the Industrial Revolution, this has added an extra 4.1 W/m² (watts per square meter) of energy to the atmosphere. Two thousand ninety-one trillion watts of energy have been added to the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans since 1750. This is the equivalent of the energy of millions of atomic bombs affecting our weather. This extra energy is violently fueling and disrupting our weather systems. It is causing weather events to be far more intense. Winter storms can become colder and be pushed further south and north than usual due to this energy, bringing damaging snowstorms and intense floods. Summer storms, especially hurricanes, tornadoes, tropical lows, etc., are far more intense, with increases in deluging destructive rainfall and floods. Droughts and heat waves are more common, resulting in more crop failures. They are also fueling damaging forest and grass fires that are burning out whole communities and changing regional ecologies due to not allowing time for recovery before subsequent fires.

Scientists assume that most of the increase in CO2 from 278 ppm in 1750 to over 427 ppm in 2024 comes from burning fossil fuels and cement production, with a small proportion from deforestation and nothing from the loss of soil organic matter. Research shows that this approach is highly problematic.

A study published by Skrable, Chabot, and French analyzed the change in the proportions of carbon-14 (C-14) in the atmosphere and disproved that the increase in CO2 is mainly the result of burning fossil fuels. All living organisms absorb C-14. It decays over time and disappears after 45,000 years. Its decay rate is used to date artifacts in archeology, paleontology, and many other sciences. Fossil fuels are so old that they do not have C-14. Consequently, the authors of this study could use it to determine the percentage of fossil fuel-based CO2 in the air from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. 2

“Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0 percent in 1750 to 12 percent in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming,”.

The research shows that a large percentage of the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere since 1750, from 280 ppm to over 400 ppm, comes from living carbon sources, not fossil fuels. These sources are obviously from clearing forests and soil organic matter (SOM) loss. 1.5 billion hectares (3.7 billion acres) of forest have been cleared since 1750, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. That’s an area 1.5 times the size of the United States. This loss of forests has made, and continues to make, a massive contribution to the current CO2 levels. These forests played an essential role in removing CO2 through photosynthesis. Not only has this removal capacity been lost, but all the biomass was oxidized into CO2 and released into the atmosphere. Clearing these ecosystems also results in huge losses of SOM that are oxidized into CO2.

Soil organic matter (SOM) is the largest carbon pool after the oceans. Soil holds almost three times as much carbon as the atmosphere and forests combined. Degenerative land use is oxidizing this SOM into CO2. Despite being the second largest planetary carbon pool, SOM’s contribution to atmospheric greenhouse gases has not been included in current models used to calculate emissions. Oxidation of SOM is caused by excessive tillage, bare soil, and erosion. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers stimulate the microbes that consume SOM and turn it into CO2. Research shows that they make considerable contributions to the CO2 in the atmosphere.

It is impossible to determine the amount of CO2 that has come from the extensive loss of SOM that started with the rapid expansion of broad-acre agriculture to supply the commodities for the Industrial Revolution due to a lack of records of the original levels of SOM. Ronnie Cummins and I give a conservative estimate in The Regenerative Agriculture Solution from the USA and Australia. Both countries had large areas of uncultivated land at the start of the Industrial Revolution, which became some of the first large industrial farms. There were records of the original SOM levels. Based on the current average SOM levels, we conservatively estimated that the United States and Australia alone are responsible for 660 billion tons (Gt) of atmospheric CO2 from the loss of SOM. This shows that thousands of Gt of CO2 have been lost from the soil and ended up in the atmosphere worldwide. 1

Researchers analyzed the results of a 50-year agricultural trial. They found that applying synthetic nitrogen fertilizer had resulted in all the carbon residues from the crop disappearing and an average loss of around 10,000 kg of soil organic carbon per hectare (10,000 Lbs per acre). It equates to emissions of 36,700 kg of CO2 per hectare (36,700 Lbs per acre) over and above the many thousands of pounds of crop residue that oxidizes into CO2 yearly. Multiple researchers have found that the higher the application of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, the greater the amount of SOM lost as CO2. 3,4,5

A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation (see Appendix) extrapolating this on 90% of croplands shows that conservatively, 51 Gt of CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere yearly by the oxidation of SOM. This is the largest source of CO2, more than fossil fuels, and is not accounted for in the models or climate change negotiations.

The Global Carbon Budget is the primary document scientists, governments, and the UN use to quantify significant components of carbon emissions and sinks and their uncertainties. It describes and synthesizes data sets and methodologies from various climate scientists, research institutions, and governments. It uses statistics, production data, numerous models, assumptions, and estimations. 6

In 2022, they estimated that total anthropogenic CO2 emissions were 40.7 Gt. Emissions from clearing forests and associated land use were 4.7 Gt. Fossil fuel and cement emissions were 36 Gt or 88%.

The Global Carbon Budget gives estimates of the ocean and land sinks that remove CO2. The ocean sink removed 10.6 Gt, 26 % of total CO2 emissions. The land CO2 sink removed 12.1 Gt, 31 % of total CO2 emissions. All the other sinks were considered so negligible that they were not worth including. They calculated that the sinks removed 57% of emissions, and the rest, 17.5 Gt, went into the atmosphere. The average measurements of the atmospheric levels of CO2 showed it had increased by 19 GT in 2022, 1.5 Gt more than the 17.5 GT estimation.

The Global Carbon Budget does not balance. The authors saw this one-and-a-half billion-ton discrepancy as a minor issue. They gave the following reasons for this imbalance: ‘Comparison of estimates from multiple approaches and observations shows the following: (1) a persistent large uncertainty in the estimate of land-use changes emissions, (2) a low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO2 flux in the northern extra-tropics, and (3) a discrepancy between the different methods on the strength of the ocean sink over the last decade.’

The methodologies, models, and assumptions used to inform them must be seriously questioned. Critically, living sources of emissions and sinks are seriously underrepresented in the models. A 2023 study published in Nature compared 11 marine biogeochemical models used to determine the amount of CO2 absorbed by the oceans by phytoplankton. The researchers found the level of uncertainty was over three times larger, calling into question the accuracy of 10.6 Gt used by the Global Carbon Budget. 7

Detailed research analyzing forests at a spatial resolution of 30 meters globally, published in Nature Climate Change in 2021, shows that forests remove 15.6 Gt of CO2 yearly compared to the Global Carbon Budget estimate of 12.1 Gt. Clearing forests and other disturbances emitted 8.1 Gt compared to the Global Carbon Budget estimate of 4.7 Gt. 8

The Global Carbon Budget models state that  88% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions come from fossil fuels and cement production, sources that do not have C-14 levels. The Skrable, Chabot, and  French study shows that 88% of the increase in CO2 since 1750 comes from sources with C-14. These are living sources, mostly from clearing ecosystems and the oxidation of soil organic matter.

Ignoring soil organic matter, the planet’s second-largest pool of carbon, as a significant source and sink for CO2 is a glaring oversight. The figures for the CO2 absorbed by forests do not account for the carbon they secrete into the soil.

Depending on the species, root exudates can distribute 10% to 40%, with an average of 30% of the CO2 captured by photosynthesis into the soil while the plants grow. The carbon compounds from root exudates penetrate deeper into the soils due to the depths of the roots than above-ground or tilled biomass. Deeper root exudates build SOM that is more durable and stable. 9, 10

Forest root exudates could amount to an extra 5 GT of CO2 removed annually, for a total of more than 20 Gt removed by forests.

Clearing 1.5 billion hectares (3.7 billion acres) of forest since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and converting them into industrial agriculture has resulted in a massive decline in

SOM and considerable increases in atmospheric CO2. Agriculture, forest, and biodiversity management must change.

However, the most significant contributor to the current record levels of CO2 is the loss of soil organic matter through industrial agriculture. Historically, it has contributed thousands of gigatons, and currently, a conservative estimate of 51 Gt annually shows that it is a much higher source than fossil fuel emissions.

We must stop clearing ecosystems and start regenerating forests and pastures, end the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, and adopt regenerative agriculture systems. This will stop the largest sources of CO2 and remove enough emissions to reverse climate change.

The following article in this series will explain how we can easily do this for a fraction of the trillions of dollars wasted on ineffective climate change mismanagement. 1, 10

Appendix for Calculations

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) has estimated that the land use:

  • Arable cropland: 1,396,374,300 hectares (3,490,935,750 acres)
  • Permanent crops: 153,733,800 hectares (384,334,500 acres)

Total 1,550,108,100 hectares
90% of this uses synthetic nitrogen fertilizers = 1,395,097,290 x 36,700 kg of CO2 per hectare = 51,200,070,543 kg

This means a conservative estimate of 51 billion tons (Gt) of CO2 are emitted into the atmosphere yearly by industrial agriculture’s oxidation of soil organic matter. This is the largest source of CO2 and is not accounted for in the models or climate change negotiations.

References

  1. Ronnie Cummins and André Leu, The Regenerative Agriculture Solution: A Revolutionary Approach to Building Soil, Creating Climate Resilience and Supporting Human and Planetary Health, Chelsea Green, September 2024
  2. Kenneth Skrable, George Chabot, and Clayton French, World Atmospheric CO2, Its 14C Specific Activity, Non-fossil Component, Anthropogenic Fossil Component, and Emissions (1750–2018), Health Physics 122,no. 2 (February 2022): 291–305,
  3. Khan, S.A., R.L. Mulvaney, T.R. Ellsworth, and C.W. Boast. 2007. The myth of nitrogen fertilization for soil carbon sequestration. Journal of Environmental Quality 36:1821-1832.
  4. Mulvaney, R.L., S.A., Khan, and T.R. Ellsworth. 2009. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers deplete soil nitrogen: A global dilemma for sustainable cereal production. Journal of Environmental Quality 38:2295-2314.
  5. Man, M., B. Deen, K.E. Dunfield, C.Wagner-Riddle, and M.J. Simpson. 2021.Altered soil organic matter composition and degradation after a decade of nitrogen fertilization in a temperate agroecosystem. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 310:107305.
  6. Friedlingstein, P., O’Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Bakker, D. C. E., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Luijkx, I. T., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Jackson, R. B., Alin, S. R., Anthoni, P., Barbero, L., Bates, N. R., Becker, M., Bellouin, N., Decharme, B., Bopp, L., Brasika, I. B. M., Cadule, P., Chamberlain, M. A., Chandra, N., Chau, T.-T.-T., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Cronin, M., Dou, X., Enyo, K., Evans, W., Falk, S., Feely, R. A., Feng, L., Ford, D. J., Gasser, T., Ghattas, J., Gkritzalis, T., Grassi, G., Gregor, L., Gruber, N., Gürses, Ö., Harris, I., Hefner, M., Heinke, J., Houghton, R. A., Hurtt, G. C., Iida, Y., Ilyina, T., Jacobson, A. R., Jain, A., Jarníková, T., Jersild, A., Jiang, F., Jin, Z., Joos, F., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Kennedy, D., Klein Goldewijk, K., Knauer, J., Korsbakken, J. I., Körtzinger, A., Lan, X., Lefèvre, N., Li, H., Liu, J., Liu, Z., Ma, L., Marland, G., Mayot, N., McGuire, P. C., McKinley, G. A., Meyer, G., Morgan, E. J., Munro, D. R., Nakaoka, S.-I., Niwa, Y., O’Brien, K. M., Olsen, A., Omar, A. M., Ono, T., Paulsen, M., Pierrot, D., Pocock, K., Poulter, B., Powis, C. M., Rehder, G., Resplandy, L., Robertson, E., Rödenbeck, C., Rosan, T. M., Schwinger, J., Séférian, R., Smallman, T. L., Smith, S. M., Sospedra-Alfonso, R., Sun, Q., Sutton, A. J., Sweeney, C., Takao, S., Tans, P. P., Tian, H., Tilbrook, B., Tsujino, H., Tubiello, F., van der Werf, G. R., van Ooijen, E., Wanninkhof, R., Watanabe, M., Wimart-Rousseau, C., Yang, D., Yang, X., Yuan, W., Yue, X., Zaehle, S., Zeng, J., and Zheng, B.: Global Carbon Budget 2023, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 5301–5369
  7. Rohr, T., Richardson, A.J., Lenton, A. et al. Zooplankton grazing is the largest source of uncertainty for marine carbon cycling in CMIP6 models. Nature, Communications Earth and Environment, 4, 212 (2023).
  8. Harris, N.L., Gibbs, D.A., Baccini, A. et al. Global maps of twenty-first century forest carbon fluxes. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 234–240 (2021).
  9. Verma S and Verma A, Plant Root Exudate Analysis, in PHYTOMICROBIOME INTERACTIONS AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE, Editor(s): Verma A, Saini JK, Hesham A and Singh HB, John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2021, Print ISBN:9781119644620, Online ISBN:9781119644798
  10. Leu André, GROWING LIFE, REGENERATING FARMING AND RANCHING, Acres USA, Greeley Colorado, USA, December 2021

The Failure of Industrial Climate Solutions

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The United Nations Climate Change Meeting COP 29 will be held in oil-exporting Azerbaijan. Like COP 28 in Dubai, this will be another pro-fossil fuel COP, pretending that ‘Green Energy’ will reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The current strategies to stop climate change have been a complete failure and a waste of trillions of dollars.

The levels of CO2, the main greenhouse gas, continue to rise. It broke a new record of 427 ppm in May 2024, the highest in 800,000 years. The ocean and land temperatures broke new record highs, with 2023 being the hottest year in recorded history for air and sea temperatures. The world passed the 1.5C (2.7F) goal of the Paris Agreement that year and is on track to shoot way past this. The emissions rate has increased from 2 ppm per annum in the decade before the Paris Agreement to 3 ppm last year. This is 50% more per year now than in 2015.

This extra energy has fueled a fivefold increase in extreme weather events (floods, storms, droughts, fires, etc.) in the last 50 years. The hotter temperatures mean droughts, storms, and fires are more frequent and stronger. As warmer air holds more water, destructive torrential flooding events such as Hurricane Helene, which devastated many towns and rural communities in the USA, and a flash flood caused by record-breaking rainfall in late October in Valencia, Spain, which killed over 178 people, are increasing. Severe droughts, fires, or storms have adversely affected nearly everywhere in the last two years.

   Switzerland’s glaciers have shrunk by over half in the last 85 years, and their melting rate is accelerating.

 
Sea levels are rising, affecting vulnerable coastal communities. One bay in the Mississippi Delta lost 430 square miles (1120 square kilometers) of land between 1932 and 2016.

The COP 28 Climate meeting showed no agreement to phase out the leading causes of CO2 emissions – fossil fuels, deforestation, and the loss of soil organic matter. The meeting agreed that fossil fuels will be part of the energy mix to reach net zero by 2050. 

There were agreements to slow down the rate of destruction of tropical forests. Brazil was the only country where ongoing forest clearing has been marginally reduced. However, this slight token reduction has been overtaken by the most significant loss of rainforest due to massive and widespread deliberately lit fires, exacerbated by the worst drought in recorded history that dried up many rivers.

The rate of destruction of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems continues to increase. Stopping and reversing the loss of soil organic matter, which is one of the significant sources of CO2, is not even mentioned in the formal agreements.

The destruction of forests and soil organic matter is to supply export commodities to the world’s wealthiest economies, not to end hunger, as there are more food-insecure people now than ever. This is a massive contribution to CO2 emissions. These forests and soils previously removed CO2 from the atmosphere. Their decaying and burnt biomass has become a significant emitter. Industrial agricultural degenerative practices continue to destroy soil organic matter, oxidizing it into CO2.(1) 

The scaling up of renewable energy systems has not reduced the rate of emissions. It cannot do this because while, in theory, they may replace some of the fossil fuel emissions, they cannot replace the massive emissions from destroying forests, pastures, and soil organic matter.

CO2 lasts over 1000 years in the atmosphere because it has a half-life of over 300 years. Unless the excess is removed, it will continue to trap heat and energy and increase the disruption of our climate. Just scaling up renewables is insufficient to stop the increase in catastrophic climate disruption events such as droughts, floods, storms, and fires.

Industrial Scale Renewable Energy Systems are Making Things Worse

Many current renewable systems are making the problem worse, not better because they take an industrial approach instead of a nature-based one. The rollout of wind turbines and large-scale solar farms is generating a lot of negative sentiment. 

Wind Turbines

Wind turbines are making negative headlines because of low-frequency noise, causing a range of health issues for neighbors, the death of birds, especially endangered and rare species such as eagles, the death of whales, the clearing of ecosystems, and ruining the ascetics of natural environments by turning them into industrial landscapes. 

Hundreds of millions of trees and thousands of acres of forest are being cleared to facilitate wind turbines and solar cells. Scotland has cleared over 16 million trees for wind turbines, and thousands of acres of high-diversity tropical forests are being cleared in Australia for wind turbines.

Germany is clearing up to 120,000 trees in one of its few old-growth forests. This ancient forest, which included trees around 1000 years old, was the setting for many of the Brothers Grimm’s stories.

The 1,000-year-old forest is being destroyed for wind turbines.

Numerous battles have been and are being fought between communities and some environmental groups to stop the construction of more wind turbine farms. Overall, the environmental movement is silent on the environmental damage they cause, which is causing rifts over climate change.

Wind turbines do not remove CO2, but the trees they have cleared remove CO2, so these wind turbines are contributing to the increase in CO2 emissions. Further, researchers have shown that scaling up wind turbines will increase temperatures rather than cool the climate.

“We find that generating today’s US electricity demand (0.5 TWe) with wind power would warm Continental US surface temperatures by 0.24C [0.5 F]. Warming arises, in part, from turbines redistributing heat by mixing the boundary layer.”(2)

Instead of meeting the 1.5C (2.7) Paris temperature goal, scaling up wind turbines will increase global warming.

Solar Panels

Similar issues are occurring with solar electric panels, including the loss of farmland for food production and the clearing of natural ecosystems. Solar panels cover millions of acres of valuable farmland and high biodiversity ecosystems. There are huge concerns that this covering of some of the world’s best agricultural lands will cause a significant reduction in food production. The American Farmland Trust forecasted that 83% of new solar energy projects will be on agricultural lands.

Globally, to achieve Net Zero, there are proposals to build solar projects on thousands of square miles to meet the ‘clean’ energy needs. If they are built, the scale of clearing these ecosystems will be one of the most significant environmental disasters on the planet.

The government of one Australian state has estimated that 70% of the farmland will need to be covered to meet its energy demands. Plans to clear over 2,500 square kilometers (965 sq miles) of biodiverse tropical Savanna woodland in Australia to export electricity to Singapore have been approved. 

Europe plans to cover parts of the Sahara with solar panels for its electricity needs. The researchers who studied this large-scale proposal found that it had many damaging consequences, including causing a  (2.7 F) 1.5C increase in temperature and global shifts in weather, drought, and forest degradation.

“…unintended remote effects of Sahara solar farms on global climate and vegetation cover through shifted atmospheric circulation. These effects include global temperature rise, particularly over the Arctic; the redistribution of precipitation (most notably droughts and forest degradation in the Amazon) and northward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone; the northward expansion of deciduous forests in the Northern Hemisphere; and the weakened El Niño-Southern Oscillation and Atlantic Niño variability and enhanced tropical cyclone activity.”(3)

This and other research shows that the large-scale rollout of solar panels will seriously exacerbate climate change instead of mitigating it. This is because they only capture around 15% of the solar energy, and the other 85% is reflected in the atmosphere, heating it.

Communities are unhappy at the loss of their farm and forest landscapes, the toxic metals that leach into the environment, and the radiation caused by being in proximity to solar farms. Solar panels don’t remove CO2—plants and soil do! Instead of clearing ecosystems for renewable energy, we need to regenerate them.

High voltage Power Lines 

Rural communities are protesting the thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines proposed or constructed across their farms and landscapes to connect the new renewable systems to the existing power grids. They have serious concerns about the radiation emitted by these lines.

The loss of visible amenities and the beauty of the rural landscapes due to their hills, farm fields, and forests covered with wind turbines, solar panels, and high-voltage lines scarring the natural vistas and turning them into ugly industrial precincts is a significant area of contention. 

Waste disposable – renewables are not renewable!

Compared to traditional energy systems, renewables’ short life cycles of around 20 years result in toxic waste disposal problems. Every solar and wind system will have to be replaced by 2050 to achieve the mythical goal of net zero.

Old wind turbines are buried or left in piles on the ground.  The disposal of used solar cells creates similar degenerative environmental waste problems. Toxic heavy metals and forever chemicals leach into the environment. Because they are rarely recycled, renewable energy systems are not renewable. 

Degenerating the Environment to supply the raw materials for renewable systems

Renewable energy systems require multiple mines to provide the metals and other compounds needed for manufacturing and constructing them. Some of the last uncontacted tribes in Indonesia are fighting to save their rainforests and traditional cultures from destruction caused by nickel mining for batteries and solar cells. 

Nickel mining for electric car batteries is destroying the last uncontacted tribes and their rainforests in Indonesia and Brazil – emitting CO2


Cobalt mining in Africa for batteries and electric cars exemplifies the worst cruelty, exploitation, and oppression of workers, especially children.


Lithium mining for batteries causes widespread destruction and poisoning of ecosystems.

Biofuels

Biofuels, on the whole, are highly problematic. Large areas of food-producing farmland are used to fuel cars, trucks, and airplanes rather than feed people. Worse still, vast areas of tropical forests have been and are still being cleared for biofuels, such as palm oil and GMO maize. They are not greenhouse gas-negative because fossil fuels are used in their production. Burning them for fuel produces CO2, the main greenhouse gas. The synthetic nitrogen fertilizers they use are produced using fossil fuels, and their use causes nitrous oxide emissions, a greenhouse gas much more potent than CO2. Quality lifecycle assessments of all the parameters used to produce biofuels show that they contribute to atmospheric greenhouse gases. They constitute a significant part of the problem, not a solution.

Nuclear Power

The most significant increases in electricity use come from the huge banks of computer servers used for The Cloud, AI, and Cryptocurrency. Computer companies such as Microsoft are building nuclear reactors to power their servers. Nuclear fuels are touted as a clean and reliable source of energy. It is now far more expensive to produce than renewables such as solar and wind. The nuclear fuel cycle causes massive environmental problems that have never been solved despite endless promises. The mining and processing of uranium causes long-term environmental damage that continues for centuries and significantly contributes to greenhouse gasses. The issue of disposing of spent nuclear fuel rods and cooling water still has not been solved. Most of them are stored in unsafe temporary sites.

Nuclear fuel rods begin to emit highly lethal gamma rays after 1 to 2 years in the reactor core. Spent fuel rods are stored in pools of water for decades as they cool down and are unsafe to approach unless shielded by many feet of water. This storage water becomes radioactive, and so far, there is no safe way to store it. In August 2023, the Japanese government began releasing hundreds of tons of radioactive cooling water from the Fukushima nuclear accident site into the Pacific Ocean as they could not store it safely.  Many experts state that this radioactivity will bioaccumulate in marine food chains, causing long-term health and reproductive problems for multiple species and people who eat seafood across the Pacific, including North America. China consequently banned the import of all Japanese seafood.

Spent nuclear fuel poses an extreme radiation hazard for hundreds of thousands of years. Ten years after removal from a reactor, the toxic radiation exceeds 10,000 rem/hour. The fatal one-time exposure dose for humans is 500 rem.

The decay of nuclear fuel is measured in half-lives. For example, a standard estimate of the half-life of spent fuel is 24,000 years. This means that after 24,000 years, half of the fuel is left after 48,000 years, and a quarter is left. After 72,000 years, an eighth is left, and at 96,000 years, a sixteenth still exists. Uranium 233 from fuel rods using thorium has a half-life of 159,200 years.  After 636,800 years, one-sixteenth remains polluting the environment. The considerable accumulation of many thousands of tons of spent fuel and other highly radioactive waste means that the toxic radioactive residues are considerable even after millions of years.

Most spent radioactive fuel is stored for decades in temporary unsafe pools of water. There are proposals for longer-term sites such as salt mines and deep underground granite caverns, most of which have been canceled due to technical problems and community opposition because they pose risks of leaching into the wider environment. Toxic radioactive leaching is already happening where spent fuel has been stored in European salt mines. There is zero credible science to show that any storage system can be safe for the millions of years needed before the radioactivity has decayed to normal background levels that are considered safe. Scientists cannot predict that the storage caverns will not be damaged by earthquakes, leaching, or other events and cause the release of these lethal poisons into the environment.

The meltdown risk continues, with Chernobyl and Fukushima still causing problems decades later. Both accidents caused massive spikes in cancer rates in communities exposed to the clouds of radioactivity.

The issue of wars causing meltdowns is genuine, with Europe’s largest nuclear reactor subject to shelling in the war between Russia and Ukraine and Israel threatening to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. Decommissioning nuclear power plants takes decades and billions of dollars and requires extensive use of greenhouse gas-polluting fossil fuels. The radioactive parts need to be disposed of, and like the spent fuel rods and cooling water, there is no proven safe way to do this.

The fact is that nuclear power is too dangerous and expensive.

Geoengineering

Geoengineering experiments have already started, such as spraying sulfur dioxide from planes to block the sun. These are potentially the most dangerous and damaging. Blocking the sun will adversely affect agricultural production and all ecosystems. All life relies on solar energy to power photosynthesis, and blocking it is an existential threat. The effects on long-term weather and climate are entirely unknown and impossible to predict with our current state of science in modeling weather and climate systems. The proponents of these geoengineering proposals must be called mad scientists who do not care about the long-term dangers they create, which are the equivalent of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. 

Carbon capture and storage (CCS)

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is promoted as a carbon draw-down technology for reducing GHG emissions. A review of all the major carbon capture projects found that over 70 percent were used for enhanced oil recovery. Oil and gas companies use the captured CO2 to pump more oil and gas out of depleted wells, producing more GHG emissions. The study reviewed 13 large-scale CCS projects currently in existence worldwide. It found that seven underperformed, and one was questionable.  Nearly 90% of the proposed CCS capacity in the power sector failed at the implementation stage or was suspended early. Only two projects in the gas processing sector demonstrated some success.

The report clearly shows that billions of dollars have been invested into this sector with very few results. The carbon capture sector is still a net emitter of GHGs. Billions more dollars are being budgeted for industrial CCS projects.

The storage of captured CO2 in underground aquifers, disused oilfields, under ocean sediments, and specially constructed caves in bedrocks is highly problematic. No studies show that any of these systems are stable over the long term and will prevent CO2 from being emitted back into the atmosphere. The most effective CCS system is a plant—especially trees, shrubs, and perennial grasses.

The Industrial Systems have Failed

The mainstream proposals are failing. They must be modified to stop the environmental and social damage they are causing. There are ways of doing this, and they must be a priority when scaling up these technologies. Unfortunately, this is not the case at the moment. The leading environmental NGOs must take full responsibility for ignoring the damage and not insisting on solutions that regenerate the planet rather than actively promoting industrial-scale constructions that degenerate it and will leave a lasting legacy of destroyed ecosystems and long-term toxic pollution. These systems mainly use taxpayer subsidies and incentives to make large corporations richer.

While rooftop solar, local microgrid systems, and energy efficiency can play minor roles, these will never keep up with the insatiable demand and growth in energy, particularly electrical energy.

So far, renewables have not made any difference to the emissions rate, which continues to increase. Scaling these technologies up to levels many hundred times greater, which are needed to replace fossil fuels, will cause a massive loss of ecosystems and increase environmental damage and community conflicts. Currently, they are not solutions. The growing evidence shows they are emerging as significant environmental problems and sources of community conflicts.

Nature-Based Regenerative Solutions as a Priority over Industrial Degeneration of the Environment

The following article in this series will show how scaling up nature-based regenerative solutions reduces emissions, removes enough CO2, and cools the planet to reverse climate change.

References

  1. Ronnie Cummins and André Leu, The Regenerative Agriculture Solution: A Revolutionary Approach to Building Soil, Creating Climate Resilience and Supporting Human and Planetary Health, Chelsea Green, September 2024  
  2. Lee M. Miller and David W. Keith, Climatic Impacts of Wind Power, Joule 2, 2618–2632, December 19, 2018
  3. Lu, Z., Zhang, Q., Miller, P. A., Zhang, Q., Berntell, E., & Smith, B. (2021). Impacts of large-scale Sahara solar farms on global climate and vegetation cover. Geophysical Research Letters, 48, e2020GL090789. https://doi. org/10.1029/2020GL090789

Response to Criticisms of Regenerative Grazing

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There have been criticisms about regenerative grazing systems and their ability to sequester greenhouse gases to assist our climate change efforts. These criticisms stem from academics steeped in the current industrial agriculture systems.

They are part of the push to blame livestock farming for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and for policies that will close it down or severely reduce it and replace the products with fake meat, eggs, and milk made from ultra-processed food from industrial agriculture. The fact is that they see nature-based systems such as regenerative grazing as a threat to this policy and thus the repeated attacks.

Industrial agriculture is an existential threat to all life on this planet. These systems are responsible for 80% of the forest destruction, up to 50% of greenhouse gases, the loss of soil organic matter, the pollution of our waterways and soils with fertilizers and toxic pesticides, the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean, Baltic and other seas, the loss of biodiversity through large scale monocultures, the crash of insects, amphibian, birds and other species due to the widespread contamination of pesticides, endocrine disruptors and forever chemicals, the continuous loss of millions of farmers, and the chronic disease epidemic from toxic pesticide-laden ultra-processed food that is empty of nutrients. These degenerative toxic systems are pushed as necessary to feed the world. The fact is that there are more food-insecure people now than at any time in history.  Industrial agriculture is an abject failure.

We started Regeneration International because agriculture needs to move from the toxic, destructive, chemical-based industrial systems to nature-based systems that use the living sciences of agroecology. Agriculture needs to be regenerated.

One of the significant problems with the papers and articles criticizing regenerative agriculture is their lack of a correct definition. We started the international regenerative agriculture movement in 2015. Before that, hardly anyone had heard about it. It was an exceptionally rarely used term.

We have made the definition very clear in numerous publications and on our website:

Regenerative systems improve the environment, soil, plants, animal welfare, health, and communities.

The opposite of Regenerative is Degenerative

This is an essential distinction in determining practices that are not regenerative.

Agricultural systems that use Degenerative Practices and inputs that damage the environment, soil, health, genes, and communities and involve animal cruelty are not regenerative.

Synthetic toxic pesticides, synthetic water-soluble fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, confined animal feeding operations, exploitive marketing and wage systems, destructive tillage systems, overgrazing, and clearing high-value ecosystems are examples of degenerative practices. These systems are, by definition, the opposite of regenerative.

Consequently, the examples given in some of these papers of regenerative grazing systems that are not improving soil organic matter and, therefore, not removing CO2 are invalid. By definition, these systems are degenerative – the opposite of regenerative. This invalidates these papers and their academic authors. They should be retracted from scientific journals for promoting falsified data.

Methane Reduction

The push to reduce livestock reduction is based on their methane emissions using an incorrect method to calculate the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) contributions to climate change. Most publications will quote them as a percentage of anthropogenic GHGs, not in their measured contributions to trapping infrared (heat) energy as a cause of climate change. The extra trapped heat energy fuels the extreme weather events that we are seeing—floods, storms, droughts, and fires.

The study, which has the most comprehensive datasets and solid methodology, states that CO2 is the main anthropogenic GHG as it amplifies the GHG effect of water vapor and clouds, the primary GHGs.

CO2 is responsible for 20% of the total GHG heat-energy increase. Water vapor and clouds are responsible for 75%. All the other anthropogenic GHGs are responsible for 5%. The contribution of methane, at most, is a 1.6% increase in GHG heat energy. (1)

Most methane emissions come from leaking gas, oil wells, and permafrost melting. Ruminants are only a percentage. The bulk of this comes from Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

While the output of methane and other greenhouse gases is considerable for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and intensive industrial livestock production systems, this is not true for regenerative grazing livestock practices on pasture. Many quality studies show that these practices sequester more greenhouse gases than they emit, making them greenhouse gas negative.

In ranch ecosystems, much of the methane emitted by animals on pasture is degraded by soil and water-based methanotrophic (methane-eating) microorganisms. These organisms do not exist in CAFOs and intensive livestock systems, so 100 percent of their emissions go into the atmosphere. Furthermore, methane is a short-lived greenhouse gas with a half-life of 12 years. It decays into CO2. This CO2 is sequestered into the soil by photosynthesis in correctly managed grazing systems. This does not happen in CAFOs and industrial animal production systems.

Photo credit: Joel Caldwell

Regenerative Grazing

Many systems, known by different names, fall under the heading of regenerative grazing, such as AMP grazing, cell grazing, mob grazing, rotational grazing, and Holistic Planned Grazing.

Allan Savory is the primary pioneer of regenerative grazing. He developed the Holistic Planned Grazing process that is used today and inspired many of the other regenerative grazing systems. This process, which uses livestock grazing to regenerate biodiversity, has proven consistently successful on every arable continent for over half a century.

Allan realized that this was the solution to regenerating rangelands. While overgrazing was caused by letting animals graze for too long and returning them before the ecosystem had time to recover, many animals grazing briefly, provided that the vegetation had enough time to recover, mimicked natural grazing by herding animal systems and increased biodiversity. Even a low stocking density of animals that continuously eat their preferred species can kill plants because they never have the opportunity to recover.

Allan has repeatedly stated that scaling up Holistic Planned Grazing of grasslands can sequester enough CO2 to reverse climate change. He has been criticized by academics entrenched in industrial agriculture paradigms, who say this is impossible. Emerging peer-reviewed publications show that Allan is correct. Research by Richard Teague and his colleagues shows that changing livestock systems can significantly increase soil organic carbon (SOC) levels. They achieved an average of 11 tons of CO2-eq per hectare per year (11,000 pounds per acre), which, if scaled up across grazing lands, would sequester 37 gigatons (Gt) annually, resulting in reverse emissions.

In a later study, researchers found similar results and recommended the widespread adoption of regenerative agriculture practices not just for increasing SOC; they also found considerable ecological and biodiversity benefits.

Photo credit: Joel Caldwell

Specifically, the researchers found that: ‘Incorporating forages and ruminants into regeneratively managed agroecosystems can elevate soil organic C, improve soil ecological function by minimizing the damage of tillage and inorganic fertilizers and biocides, and enhance biodiversity and wildlife habitat. We conclude that to ensure long-term sustainability and ecological resilience of agroecosystems, agricultural production should be guided by policies and regenerative management protocols that include ruminant grazing.’

Research has also demonstrated that changing practices can rapidly increase SOC. Tong Wang and his colleagues found that when poor management lowers SOC stock over time, transitioning to an improved regenerative practice will increase SOC stock at a higher rate. Researchers using regenerative grazing practices in the southeastern United States sequestered 29.36 metric tons of CO2-eq per hectare per year. Significantly, the authors gave other examples from research worldwide that achieved similar SOC sequestration levels through regenerative grazing. Hence, the results of this research paper are not an isolated outlier. If these best-practice regenerative grazing systems were implemented on the world’s 8.4 billion acres of permanent pastures, it would sequester 98.6 gigatons of CO2 per year, significantly more than the 28 gigatons of CO2-eq currently emitted annually. This would start to reverse climate change and regenerate the planet’s ecosystems.

Regenerative systems are GHG-negative. They remove more GHGs than they emit. Phasing out CAFOs and intensive industrial livestock systems and scaling up regenerative animal husbandry systems will help us reverse climate change.

Allan Savory has made a massive contribution to achieve this. He founded the Savory Institute, now headquartered in Denver, Colorado, the Africa Centre for Holistic Management near Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, and Holistic Management International, headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These organizations work with ranchers and farmers worldwide to scale up Holistic Planned Grazing on every continent. As of this writing, there are 54 “Savory Hubs” in 30 countries with 203 accredited professionals who have trained 15,755 land managers on 55 million acres (22 million hectares) of land. We need these systems scaled up over billions of acres.

For more information on this, please read the Regenerative Agriculture Solution.

  1. Schmidt, G. A., R. A. Ruedy, R. L. Miller, and A. A. Lacis, “Attribution of the present‐day total greenhouse effect,” Journal of Geophysical Research 115 (October 2010): D20106, doi: 10.1029/2010JD014287

Agave, Mesquite, and a Carbon Drawdown Game-Changer, Interview with RI director André Leu

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Regeneration International director, André Leu was part of the Radio Cafe Podcast, to talk about his new book is  The Regenerative Agriculture Solution: A Revolutionary Approach to Building Soil, Creating Climate Resilience, and Supporting Human and Planetary Health, published by Chelsea Green Press, where you can use the code CGP35 to get 35% off this book.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

First Congress on Traditional Medicine and Herbalism at Cencalli

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From September 6 to the 8 we attended the First Congress on Traditional Medicine and Herbalism at Cencalli. Over 20 wise men and women shared their ancestral knowledge on medicinal plants, healing rituals and traditional practices.

The congress took place at Los Pinos, the  official residence of the President of Mexico from 1924 to 2018, located inside of Chapultepec Park.

Since December 2018, the former presidential complex has operated as a cultural space. Within Los Pinos Cultural Complex is Cencalli, the house of corn and food culture. The museum is dedicated to the 68 indigenous cultures of Mexico and their cultural biodiversity. Cencalli means family in Nahuatl. What once used to be the seat of power, and the presidential palace has now become the house of the people.

Knowledge about the use of medicinal plants is millenary and has been associated with ideas, experiences, beliefs and traditions, generating a strong connection between the great diversity of plants and the cultures that have learned to use them. It is estimated that worldwide, more than 52,000 plant species are used for medicinal purposes. China ranks first with a total of 4,900 species of medicinal plants while Mexico ranks second with the use of approximately 4,500 species, which represents 0.86% of the world total and 18% of the plants that make up the vegetation of Mexico(25,008 species).

In 2023, UNESCO defined intangible cultural heritage as the practices, expressions, knowledge and skills that communities, groups and sometimes individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. Also called living cultural heritage, it is usually expressed in one of the following forms: oral traditions; performing arts; social practices, rituals and festive events; knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe; and traditional craftsmanship.

Traditional Mexican medicine, based on herbalism is a form of intangible cultural heritage, passed on from one generation to the other and full of symbolism and rituals. With very prepared presentations, wisdom and knowledge, this first congress marked one of many highlighting the cultural richness of Milpa Alta and Xochimilco, in the outskirts of Mexico City.

The importance of the Códice de la Cruz Badiano to keep that memory alive was also recognized. The Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, known as Codex Badiano or Codex de la Cruz-Badiano was compiled in 1552 by the Nahuatl physicians Martín de la Cruz and Juan Badiano, at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco, Xochimilco. It represents a key piece to understand and preserve the ancestral knowledge of Mesoamerican plants.

The Codex was commissioned by Francisco de Mendoza son of the viceroy of Mendoza, in order to give it as a gift to Emperor Charles V as a sample of the natural wealth of the “Indies”. It was given to his successor, Philip I and kept in the Royal Library until the 17th century when it became part of the collection of Diego de Cortavila, pharmacist to King Philip IV and later taken to Italy by the pharmacist Cassiano dal Pozzo (who made a copy that ended up in the archives of the Winsdor Library in England) and incorporated into the collection of Cardinal Francisco Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban VII. In 1625 the collection became part of the archives of the Vatican Library in Rome where, in 1929, it was discovered by the American historian Charles Upson Clark and led to its publication in English (The de la Cruz Badiano aztec herbal of 1552), translated by Demetrio S. García into Spanish under the title “Libro de yerbas medicinales de los indios”. In 1991, after the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Mexico and the Vatican, Pope John Paul II returned it to Mexico, forming part of the National Library of Anthropology.

There was also a presentation of a beautiful collection of books on Medicinal Plants of the Conservation Land of Mexico City, developed by the Natural Resources and Rural Development Commission of Mexico through its Altépetl Bienestar Social Program for the benefit of ecosystems, agroecosystems and the communities that inhabit the Conservation land of Mexico City, home to people who have preserved for generations the original knowledge about plants and their benefits for health and the environment.

A PDF free version of these beautiful collection of books is available online here

My Thoughts on the Article: ‘Regenerative grazing is overhyped as a climate solution. We should do it anyway’, Published on August 15, 2024

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I have read with great interest the article, Regenerative Grazing is overhyped as a climate solution, by Dr Jonathan Foley, published on August 15th. I deeply regret having to contradict such unprofessional work that is doing great damage to all of humanity as we face global biodiversity loss and desertification fueling climate change. I work daily with small rural family farmers who are on the frontlines of dealing with extreme climatic changes and their effects. We are daily learning the importance of well-managed livestock and its relationship to the great landscapes of all seasonal rainfall areas, their people, and all life that depends on these landscapes. I have never seen or known anything more hopeful for landscapes like ours, except using the tool of holistically managed animals to regenerate grasslands.

 

Firstly, I will put it out there, as some of you readers are aware, and some aren’t;- “regenerative grazing”,  is one of many derivatives of Holistic Management and it’s Holistic Planned Grazing process, published in the book Holistic Management, by Allan Savory and Jody Butterfield (Island Press). First published in the early 1990s and now in 3rd Edition.  There are dozens of plagiarizations and derivations due to unethical academic behavior and refusal to acknowledge the origin of such truly groundbreaking discoveries.  As Dr Carl Hart, a tenured professor at Columbia wrote in his memoir High Price, the ethical standards in academia are lower than those in the Miami drug gang world in which he grew up.  However, regardless of the greatest barrier in these times, we still have to continuously put out our voices whenever we can. This gives us an opportunity to share hope and do our best to continuously create connections in an ever-complex and differently patterned world.

 

This academic problem is further compounded by an inability to grasp new management discoveries that go beyond academic disciplinary boundaries.  John Ralston Saul captures this well,  published in his best-selling Voltaire’s Bastards, “The reality is that the division of knowledge into feudal fiefdoms of expertise has made general understanding and coordinated action not simply impossible but despised and distrusted.”

 

Dr Foley’s article falls short as it seems to be caught in the above description, watering down a process being critiqued without a sincere understanding or knowledge.  Holistic planned grazing is designed to manage the complexities of natural patterns and occurrences of an ecosystem. It is also a harvest and re-engagement of old communal knowledge and wisdom innate in these pastoral and agro-pastoral communities.

 

I live alongside the conservancy and home of Allan Savory in Zimbabwe.  This is not only his home but where I did years of work and training after graduating from university. This is the same hub located in the toughest part of the country. It is the home of Holistic Management and it’s Holistic Planned Grazing process.  Knowing and seeing how the conservancy has been continuously transforming and evolving for better; Dr. Foley’s utterances are in sharp contrast with reality and readily available material to the contrary,  as any scholarly work should have shown up. Incidentally at no time has Savory ever claimed Holistic Planned Grazing is a climate change solution. He has often stated that “…the greatest problem facing humanity is biodiversity loss and desertification fueling climate change. “  That climate change will continue even with 100% cessation of fossil fuel use because of desertification. The only point at which this deadly feedback loop or cycle can be addressed is not at the atmospheric level but at the level of biodiversity loss and desertification. The Conservancy and practicing communal farmer groups have proof that using holistically planned grazing can change the narrative of the world’s desertifying seasonal rainfall landscapes.

Photo of water flowing through an underground spring at the Savory Dimbangombe Conservancy. Photo was taken at the peak of dry season- September 10th, 2023). Grazing planning helps us capture and harvest water through soil. Giving us an opportunity to have the greatest reservoir and ultimately rivers flowing throughout the year with abundance of life in the ecosystem.


This same landscape is home to diverse wildlife. On this same afternoon we spotted a herd of elephants coming from taking a mud bath and a drink at the spring at Dimbangombe conservancy.

A quote from the host of the National Geographic/ PBS documentary filmed here –“If Allan is right, then we may have to completely rethink life on the plains. The message is an extraordinarily powerful one, and it could be the best thing, the absolute best thing that conservation has ever discovered.”

“In a million years, I never thought that cows could be so beneficial for the wildlife I love . . . As an ecologist I was taught that people, and especially their livestock, are the enemy of wildlife, but my journey from Africa to the Arctic to here in Montana, is forcing me to rethink everything I know about conservation.”
Dr M.Sanjayan

For Dr Foley’s interest, and as he will learn should he study the textbook and many other materials available from the Savory Institute.  The Holistic Planned Grazing process Savory developed from 1,000 years of European military experience planning in immediate battlefield situations that have high potential of changing without notice or preparedness. He had merely to adapt it to work universally where animals are grazed on any land.    It was subjected to International trial in the 1970s , as well as an Advanced Project on the worst desertifying land in the country to see if failure could be forced by excess animal numbers. That ran for 8 years unable to cause failure and became healthy grassland  yielding five times the meat per hectare as compared to the 200,000 acre control area that continued to desertify. We have a lot of other shining examples across the world through Savory hubs, evidence produced by small and largescale farmers on the overall improvement of ecosystems, social well being as well as livelihood stability for farmers as their landscape and livestock management moves towards being holistic.

Below are some images of communal grazing areas in Zimbabwe facilitated by Regeneration International partner organization iGugu Trust. (Ndlovu community images).


Grazing areas of communal farming lands, the bottom land plot is following a holistic planned grazing and showing recovery of grass plants, compared to the top plot that has continuous livestock presence. The paddock, grass and livestock all already look unhealthy with high chances of struggling through the  tough dry season ahead.

Overgrazing happens when animals are left wander on their own on the landscape, leading to over exposure of grass plants to animals in the growing season, giving them little to no chance for recovery. The grass plant ends up adapting a strategy to “run away from the mouth of a grazer” as shown on the top picture.  The bottom shows high animal impact by a large herd over a short period of about 3 days in the growing season.


In the non-growing (dry) season well managed paddocks will have forage, cover and comfort for the stressed environment compared to the top plot where one can already see top soil from lack of ground cover.

I believe Dr Foley is a genuine and well-meaning casualty of our reductionist world-view and education, and I hope he will consider studying this matter more thoroughly, meanwhile retracting such a damaging publication.  Millions of people in Africa are suffering and dying because of desertification and they are also flooding Europe.  As an African I am deeply concerned as I hope everyone is.

Organic Farmers Speak Out on Immigration

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As farmers who are dedicated to the health of the soil and of the people who eat our crops, we are also concerned about justice and equity.  For our farms to thrive, we need many hands – most of us share the work with the people we hire because we know it is healthy, dignified labor with a deep social purpose. Like conventional farmers, many of us depend on immigrant labor. It is painful to hear immigrants attacked as criminals when we know the hard-working people without whose labor there would not be food on many tables in this country, and the new entry farmers who overcome daunting obstacles to establish outstanding farms and farm networks.

The immigrants who come here make enormous sacrifices, separating from their families for long stretches, missing important family milestones, even sickness and death, to work for OUR food system at jobs that many citizens are unwilling to do.

Undocumented immigrants contributed $96.7 billion in taxes in the United States in 2022 and paid higher state and local tax rates than the top 1% of households in the vast majority of states, according to a study published in August by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The study further found that undocumented immigrants paid $59.4 billion in federal taxes and contributed an additional $37.4 billion to state and local tax coffers in 2022. Per capita, they paid $8,889 in total taxes, and one-third of this money went for programs from which they are excluded because of their immigrant status.

Jessica Culley, the General Coordinator of CATA, the Farmworker Support Committee in New Jersey, writes:

“Legislation and executive orders addressing piecemeal immigration issues are not the answer, and focusing only on issues at the border and asylum is not the answer. The last real immigration reform law was passed in the 1980s. Since then, Congress has failed to do anything to fix the current broken immigration system and instead now has resorted to just using immigrants as a pawn in their political games to hold onto power.”

As organic farmers, we are a strong, diverse, entrepreneurial, and innovative community. Among us, immigrants have contributed significantly to the advancement of organic, and regenerative agriculture that is grounded in ancestral indigenous ecological knowledge, and enhanced by the hard-working descendants of the original people of these lands from Canada throughout Central America who now have to migrate across their own ancestral lands to make ends meet and to support their families.

As Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, a first generation Guatemalan immigrant and leader in the Regenerative Agriculture Movement in the US writes: “many of us, like other immigrants before us, came to this country ready to give it all, to contribute to the social, economic, and ecological well being of the nation, and we will keep doing this despite the apathy and lack of respect and often outright discrimination from Government at all levels, educational institutions, and the system as a whole. Public figures must be held accountable for how they portray immigrants, documented or not; when a leader makes a statement, it has a ripple effect. We come together to seek accountability for those using immigration as a political game. Words have tremendous power that can traumatize and lead to violence against first generation US citizens, their families, and the millions who, through no fault of their own, have had to leave their homelands to survive.”

The current US immigration system is dysfunctional and continues to get worse as more people are forced from their homes by extreme poverty, wars, and rampaging climate change. As people who ourselves are the children and grandchildren of immigrants, we want comprehensive immigration reform established by legislative action that creates fair and humane immigration policies, with a path to citizenship for the undocumented, and recognizes the humanity and dignity of all immigrants. We welcome the many farmers among the tide of immigrants, and want them to receive land, and resources for farming it. We demand an end to targeting and blaming the millions of people who come to our country seeking to contribute their work and provide a better life for their families. A fully sustainable system of food and farming is not possible without justice for all the people of the earth.

Signed by:

Elizabeth Henderson, Peacework

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, Salvatierra Farms

Julie Davenson, Osgood Ridge Farm

Leah Penniman, Soul Fire Farm

Petra Page-Mann, Fruition Seeds

Anne Schwartz, Blue Heron Farm

Dru Rivers and Paul Muller, Full Belly Farm

Elizabeth Bragg, Long Hearing Farm

Nancy Vail and Jered Lawson, Pie Ranch

Laura Davis, Long Life Farm

Mary-Howell Martens, Lakeview Organic Grain

Klaas Martens, Klaas and Mary-Howell Martens Farm

Michael Sligh, Vineyard Creek Farm

Regeneration International

SIGN THE LETTER HERE

The Regenerative Agriculture Solution

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“Read this book to understand why you should care about regenerative agriculture. Until the public is better-informed and insists on sweeping changes to current agricultural policy . . . we will continue to degrade our planet and destabilize our climate. Leu and Cummins, through inspiring stories and solid science, show just how quickly we could turn that around.”—Allan Savory, president, Savory Institute; chairman, Africa Centre for Holistic Management

Is it possible that the solution to the global climate emergency lies in a “waste” agricultural product? 

The best-kept secret in today’s world is that solutions to some of our most pressing issues—food insecurity, deforestation, overgrazing, water scarcity, rural poverty, forced migration—lie in adopting, improving, and scaling up organic and regenerative agriculture best practices.

The Regenerative Agriculture Solution starts with the story of how two brothers—Jose and Gilberto Flores—are at the leading edge of this approach, pioneering the use of the previously discarded leaves of the prodigious agave plant to regenerate agricultural soils, reduce erosion, and improve water capture.

When Ronnie Cummins, the cofounder of Organic Consumer Association (OCA) and Regeneration International, met the Flores brothers in 2019 and witnessed their revolutionary agave agroforestry system, he knew they were onto something important.

Cummins had spent decades studying the potential and pitfalls of organic and regenerative agriculture and knew best practices when he saw them. He started to write a book about Flores’s brother and other visionary people, such as Dr Vandana Shiva, Allan Savory, and John Liu, who started landscape-scale regeneration projects. The scientific data was even more convincing, suggesting that these projects—and others like it—could revolutionize how we understand the climate catastrophe.

Sadly, Cummins passed away in April 2023, in the midst of working on the book. Not to leave this work unfinished, Ronnie’s widow and OCA cofounder, Rose, called on their friend, colleague, and collaborator, Regeneration International’s cofounder André Leu, to complete the work and place the Flores brothers’ breakthroughs in the broader context of regenerative agriculture solutions to the world’s many interlocking ecological crises.

The result isThe Regenerative Agriculture Solution, a book that shows how regenerating our forests, rangelands, and farming ecosystems can cool our planet, restore the climate, and enrich our communities.

CONTINUE READING ON CHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING

In Service to Family, Community, the Land and Life As Family – in Conversation With Precious Phiri

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On July 1st, 2024, I caught up with one of the most inspirational women I have ever met. I had the pleasure of getting to know Precious through the LUSH Spring Prize as we were both members of the initial jury of the prize. Precious rocks!

Here is how she describes herself:

“One of my biggest inspirations in life is the resiliency and generosity found in nature, the possibility to reduce poverty, restore dignity, rebuild soils, and restore food and water security for people, livestock and all life. I am a founding trustee and Director of IGugu Trust, African Coordinator for Regeneration International. I am also a trainer, accredited professional (Communal) in Holistic Management by Savory Institute. My experience is designing a regenerative organization and programs. I have 18 years of experience in programs curation, curriculum development, community organizing, networking, land monitoring and using Holistic Management process to implement regenerative actions.

My main interest is to promote abundance thinking and reverse poverty, desertification, loss of wildlife, and climate change and its effects. I am also a contributor to different networks on the continent; PELUM, Seed and Knowledge Initiative and Alliance for Food Sovereignty (AFSA). I have contributed to 2 books as a coauthor, and I am conference speaker, bringing stories and issues of small holder farmers to global platforms.

I have been a Judge for the £200 000 Lush Spring Prize award, housed by Lush UK since 2017. With a role to take part in a judging and awarding process for incredible regenerative projects from around the world. I am one of the course instructors for Ecosystem Restoration Camps. I’ve been an advisor for the Regenerosity Program supporting organizations and programs in East Africa. This is a program implemented by Lush and Buckminster Fuller Institute in partnership with IKEA.

I am continuously grateful for my upbringing by my heroic late grandmother, who stood her ground and protected the girl kids she raised from early arranged marriages of the day and a well-wishing UK based family that made me access education. I could have never known the resilience and stubbornness of hope and the great community of leaders on whose shoulders I stand.”

Cultivating Change Gathering in Tanzania: Transforming Food Systems

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There is a large number of farmer movements, initiatives and organizations that have practicing and advocating for decades to scale and accelerate regenerative and agroecological food systems transformations.

However, funding – or more, the lack of it- is still a very big issue. According to a recent report by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food (GAFF), the transition to agroecology and regenerative food systems will require U$D 430 billion annually, but right now only U$D 44 billion goes towards this in contrast with the U$D 630 billion which goes annually towards harmful agriculture subsidies. [1]

From June 4 to 7, I was invited by the Agroecology Coalition to attend the Cultivating Change Gathering in Arusha, Tanzania. The meeting was convened by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, Biovision Foundation, Agroecology Coalition and Climate Works Foundation.

Over 100 people including funders, governments officials and civil society representatives gathered for two very important events on agroecology, fertilizers, and transitions in food systems, including discussing and rallying support to scale and accelerate agroecological good systems transformation.

The main objectives of the June 2024 Cultivating Change Convening were:

  • Accelerate Implementation: Reflect on opportunities to align and coordinate strategies, policies, resources, funding and finance to support initiatives to take root and/or scale, with a focus on Tanzania and East Africa.
  • Facilitate Knowledge Sharing:Exchange insights from ongoing transition processes and regional discussions.
  • Catalyze Coordination: Build relationships and connections within and between countries and regions involved in agroecological transitions.

Charles Tumuhe, AFSA (Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa)

The experience was overall very enriching as we had the opportunity to learn about the transition programs in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. In the case of Tanzania, the National Ecological Organic Agriculture Strategy (NEOAS) has become the gold standard for the transition towards agroecology in the region which has in part been achieved by an increase in its agriculture budget of five times since 2021.

The NEOAS process includes six priority action areas and has been developed by a multistakeholder participatory process in which the TOAM (Tanzanian Organic Agriculture Movement), one of the founding members of Regeneration International has been involved since the beginning, in particular through the work of  its wonderful chair, Mwatima Juma.

Other Eastern African countries are also on the way to develop or have developed the own agroecology strategies and it was really important to also hear from them and draw parallelisms about the common struggles and challenges and farmers all over the world.

Some of the key take aways of the meeting were:

  1. The fundamental recognition of indigenous, farmer and local and traditional knowledge and practices is of superb importance.
  2. One of the priorities to bridge the funding gap is to coordinate efforts within the donor community and bring a united front of support that goes directly to farmers and civil society organizations.
  3. The regenerative agroecology agenda must be in direct dialogue with the climate, biodiversity and health agenda.
  4. It is important to work educating consumers, create demand and develop market pathways for agroecology products.
  5. Extensionist should be trained in agroecology, since they play a very important role in dissemination and education.
  6. Promote peer to peer programs and support PSG and more accessible certification systems.
  7. Coordinate global efforts and regional efforts and learn about the beacons of hope, local and regional governments who have embraced regeneration and agroecology.

Mwatima Juma, founding member of Regeneration International, Chair of the Organic Agriculture Movement in Tanzania (TOAM)

The feeling after attending a meeting like this so far away from home is that agroecology has become a galvanizing force for the different movements and has gone from being marginalized, considered far too radical or minimized as an alternative to actually becoming the only and most viable alternative we have to change our food systems. An inclusive agroecology that tackles the issues and goals of food sovereignty, the strengthening of short supply chains and local food systems and healthy diets for a healthy planet.

[1] https://futureoffood.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/GA_CultivatingChange_Report_052124.pdf