First Congress on Traditional Medicine and Herbalism at Cencalli

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

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

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

“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

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

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

Regeneration International’s Partnership With the South Seas University

The Regeneration International Academy, in partnership with the South Seas University, has held two online courses on regenerative agriculture.

This semester, we are expanding the course to include agroecology and organic agriculture with the title of AROA (Agroecology, Regenerative, and Organic Agriculture). Bringing these three major global movements together as complementary systems is essential. Very importantly, this is a certificate course from an accredited degree-granting university. We plan to have the organic regenerative agriculture faculty offer a range of courses by recognized experts in regenerative, organic, and agroecological practices and systems in the following semesters.

Most people know me as a long-term organic farmer and the international director of Regeneration International. I have decades of teaching experience, communication and adult education degrees, and a Doctorate in Environmental and Agricultural Systems. I have taught and lectured in tertiary institutions on most continents and developed and run many types of courses. These include training courses for farmers, some delivered in institutions and others on farms at farmers’ shed meetings.

I have had the opportunity to use the title of adjunct (part-time) professor for decades; however, I have only chosen to use it now. The current course I have developed in partnership with South Seas University is the most important of all the courses I have developed and taught.

From experience, I have learned that developing innovative courses in most long-established tertiary institutions is very hard. They like conformity to traditional norms and do not like taking risks. The academic mainstream largely ignores and denigrates our agricultural systems. As an organic farmer, teaching in standard agronomy courses offered by most institutions meant being ostracized and marginalized by the academic staff and management for criticizing the mainstream paradigms of toxic pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.

South Seas University (SSU) has a history of innovation, so when I was offered the opportunity to form a department of organic and regenerative agriculture, I jumped at it.

SSU was founded with a vision to provide quality education at an affordable cost, leveraging innovative technology and cooperation with the world’s leading academic institutions. It came about after political upheaval in the Dominican Republic in 1997-1998 caused numerous universities and medical schools to close. Aspiring medical professionals found themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous individuals exploiting their desperation.

Under the leadership of Sir Tom Davis, Dr. Reza Chowdhury, and Lady Carla Davis, the Board worked tirelessly to raise the necessary funds to fill the gap for these students left by the loss of their medical schools and to provide affordable degrees.  By 1999, SSU gained registration with the Government of the Cook Islands as a degree-granting university. The James Cook School of Medicine (JCSM) was registered as the SSU Faculty of Medicine. It was listed in the WHO World Directory of Medical Schools and other licensing authorities. The first cohort of displaced students from the Dominican Republic formed the inaugural class at JCSM. This accomplishment provided SSU’s JCSM graduates with U.S. board exam registration eligibility. It also affirmed the quality and credibility of their education.

SSU’s management brought in distinguished faculty from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, India, Australia, and the United States. SSU forged partnerships with clinical sites across the US, UK, Dominican Republic, India, and Mexico. SSU also introduced IT programs to meet local demand and collaborated with a School in India to produce a nursing program. In the region, SSU was seen as an innovative role model in assisting students in obtaining Medicine, Nursing, and IT degrees. This international collaboration fostered a diverse student body, enriching the educational experience and broadening perspectives.

Running and financing a small university in a developing country brought numerous challenges, especially the costs of securing the necessary registrations and recognitions from relevant authorities before students enrolled. The expensive and limited housing in the Cook Islands, the high cost of communications, and political changes meant numerous adjustments and reorganizations of teaching methods had to be implemented as SSU built its foundation.

The advances in online technology saw SSU increase its reach and affordability for students, reducing the need for travel and accommodation costs.

However, the passing of SSU’s Chancellor, Sir Tom Davis, brought new challenges.  Then, almost two years of border closures and lockdowns due to COVID-19 presented additional challenges that SSU and its Board had to navigate.

With the borders opening and life returning to pre-COVID normal, the Chief Operating Officer and board chair, Dr. Reza Chowdhury, encouraged Lady Carla Davis to take on her late husband’s role as Chief Executive Officer and Dr. Johannes Schonborn, Dean of the James Cook School of Medicine, as acting Chancellor. Lady Carla Davis had the vision to expand the agriculture and health/nutrition programs and provide/pioneer other unique online courses to revolutionize education and help young people create a better world.

SSU has started to grow again and has restarted offering online certificate courses.  Lady Carla Davis (a nutrition educator), plans to offer OL programs in Nutrition and medical degree courses again.

Dr. Bernell Christensen, PhD, from Utah, will set up the School of Psychology program for Bangladesh (to start) through the James Cook School of Medicine. He has cooperation agreements with leading medical schools to stream their lectures online to SSU students. These students will access clinical clerkships at accredited teaching hospitals in the US and UK.

As part of the holistic approach, a certificate course in Regenerative Health taught by educator, physician, and pediatrician Dr. Michelle Perro, MD, is being offered this semester. Dr Perro is the co-author of the highly acclaimed book What’s Making our Children Sick? This course is open to all and complements the innovative medical degree program. It features:

  • The state of our health and how we got here.
  • An algorithm on how to move from dependency on pharmaceuticals towards food-based solutions to address health concerns and challenges
  • Making our children well: A look at the microbiome
  • Nutrition for Health Basics with practical solutions
  • Homeopathy as a safe, effective, and affordable tool for managing acute and chronic health situations

Consistent with Lady Carla Davis’s vision to provide unique online courses to revolutionize education and help young people create a better world, SSU is offering a certificate course in Education for Total Consciousness (ETC). Taught by His Holiness Jagadguru Swami Isa, the course gives practicing or aspiring teachers and parents the fundamentals of teaching ‘total knowledge’ in the classroom or at home.

Negotiations and plans are underway for more certificate courses, as these are the most accessible. Later, as funding increases, more degree and postgraduate degree courses will be added.

From my perspective as a long-term organic farmer and educator, providing high-quality, accessible, and affordable education is the key to scaling up our nature-based regenerative systems. This is essential to break degenerative industrial agriculture’s near monopoly control on education. SSU gives us a critically important opportunity to do this.

High-level Scientific and Technological Support for the Billion Agave Project

On May 8th, a collaboration agreement was signed in the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, between the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco (CIATEJ) and Regeneration International (RI), in order to strengthen and promote the Billion Agave Project (BAP) in the following areas: research and scientific and technological transfer, project development and implementation, human resources, dissemination, training and institutional services. The agreement was signed by Dr. Eugenia del Carmen Lugo Cervantes, Director General of CIATEJ and Luis Arturo Carrillo Sánchez, Coordinator of the BAP.

The establishment of this agreement is part of one of BAP’s strategic axes of development, which is to formalize and consolidate an active network of collaboration with various entities from the social, community, academic, public and private sectors, to enable the implementation of the project on a national scale.

This alliance with CIATEJ, one of the most prestigious research centers in Mexico and a leader in agave research, is of paramount importance for the BAP, since some of the productive projects that are being promoted through this initiative require the knowledge already developed by this research center. Such is the case of the extraction and characterization of agave inulin, which is a family of complex sugars with multiple beneficial properties for health and highly demanded in the food and pharmaceutical sector, and whose market is growing.

Adding value to agave cultivation through the implementation of sustainable productive projects that diversify its use, such as the extraction and commercialization of inulin, is one of the BAP’s strategies to encourage producers to establish agroecological agave-based plantations that strengthen bioculturality and contribute to carbon sequestration, as well as to the ecological, social and economic regeneration of the territory.

Photo credit: Joel Caldwell

Agave can be harvested from the root to the stalks. However, in some regions, the industry has focused on taking advantage of only some of its products, as is the case of tequila derived from blue agave in the state of Jalisco or the fiber obtained from henequen in Yucatan. This is why the BAP seeks to rescue the millenary vision of holistic use, generating projects that add social, economic and environmental value.

During the event, the scientific and technological capabilities of CIATEJ were highlighted through its five lines of research: Plant Biotechnology, Industrial Biotechnology, Food Technology, Environmental Technology and Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. These capabilities were presented with the objective of actively participating in the project, taking advantage of the vast experience accumulated in topics related to agave, from its cultivation to the management and reuse of residues.

Several organizations, institutions and companies attended to this event, including the Agaveros en Alianza, agave and raicilla producers, the Centro de Biotecnología Genómica del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, the Centro Universitario de Ciencias Biológicas y Agropecuarias de la Universidad de Guadalajara, the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuarias sede Jalisco, the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, the National Forestry Commission, the Subdirectory of Technological Innovation and Science Linkage of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Rancho El Mexicano, the Subsecretaría de Fomento e Innovación Económica de Nuevo León, the company Sarape Social, and the Agricultural and Agroindustrial Council of the State of Jalisco.

At the end of the event, a tour of the CIATEJ facilities was conducted so that they could learn first-hand about its capabilities and resources, thus facilitating future collaborations.

Fair Prices for Farmers

There is a massive misunderstanding in blaming group certification for the lower prices that undercut US organic growers.

  1. There is 100% inspection of farms in group certification through the Internal Control System (ICS)
  2. The ICS is third-party certified by USDA-accredited certifiers.
  3. The majority of the world’s organic farmers are group-certified, and it has improved their lives.
  4. Banning group certification will hurt these farmers, and the organic sector will lose millions of farmers as they cannot afford third-party certification.
  5. The cheap imports will then be supplied by agribusiness that will be third-party certified.
  6. The trade sectors drive the lower prices and take the highest percentage of the final sale price.
  7. A campaign to ensure fair prices for family farmers must be launched to counter the trade sectors that take the most of the retail price.

All group certification systems have an Internal Control System (ICS) as part of their documented quality assurance system. This includes the organic standard, training to ensure compliance with the standard, and inspection procedures. Inspectors trained in the ICS procedures inspect every farmer annually.

The accredited third-party certifier (USDA accredited) checks the whole ICS, including office procedures, staff roles, standards, and records, ensuring the ICS has inspected every farmer. In addition, every year, the certifier randomly and directly inspects a percentage of farmers to ensure that they comply with the ICS. If they find non-compliance, they will continue to check more farmers, resulting in the loss of the certification.

Photo credit: Joel Caldwell

Organic group certification is one of the biggest success stories in taking family farmers out of poverty and food insecurity and into a life of well-being. Over 2 million family farmers benefit from it.

Most group certification schemes are run by not-for-profit organizations that democratically elect their boards and employ local staff to manage the operations. These organizations tend to sell their products to traders and marketing companies that import and export them. This sector determines the prices farms receive and consumers pay. This sector takes the highest percentage of the final sale price, not the farmers.

The cost of certification is not the reason imported products from developing countries are cheaper than US products. Lower labor and production costs are the reason the trade sector can undercut the prices farmers at the country of destination receive to take a larger share of the market. This applies to all products from these countries, whether third-party or group-certified.

Banning group certification will not fix the problem of cheap imports. It will only stop small family farmers, some of the poorest on the planet, from earning an income and force them into extreme poverty.

The overall cost of certifying a group is much higher per acre than certifying a single farm. Agribusiness companies can acquire and consolidate these vacated farms and have them all certified as one large farm for a lower cost per acre. They will mechanize production and employ a small percentage of the ex-farmers as low-paid landless laborers. The rest join the farming diaspora, living in poverty on the fringes of the big cities. We see this with imports of organic avocados, mangoes, wine, etc, from Latin America and grains from Eastern Europe. These are all third-party certified large-acre organic farms consolidated from previously small-family farms.

These corporations will continue to land cheap organic products on the US market, undercutting US organic farmers.

Being undercut by imports is an issue that all farmers face, not just organic farmers in the US. The loss of income from family farms is one of the driving forces for the worldwide farming diaspora. The majority of migrants crossing into the USA and Europe are farmers who have been forced off their land by poverty and food insecurity.

Cheap U.S. GMO imports have put most Mexican corn farmers out of business. Californian imports destroyed the off-season grape market in tropical Australia, bankrupting farmers. Australian and New Zealand grass-fed meat undercuts U.S. producers like Will Harris of White Oak Pastures. The list is enormous.

The key issue is that all countries, including the USA, must protect their farmers from cheap imports. In the past, tariffs were used for this purpose; however, ‘free trade’ such as NAFTA has removed them, put farmers out of business, and made massive profits for agribusiness.

It is not just imports. Organic hydroponics, CAFOs, and corporate supply chain monopolies put family organic farms out of business.

Low-cost industrial-scale monocultures and agribusiness marketing monopolies are major contributors to the farming diaspora.  This is part of the bigger issue of agribusiness destroying family farming by driving down the percentage of retail sales they receive. The percentage of the retail price farmers receive continues to decline from 80% a century ago to as low as a few percent for the highly processed toxic junk now sold as food. The traders have taken this money and continue to improve their percentage at the expense of farmers. Farmers need to get their fair percentage.

A campaign to ensure ‘Fair prices for Family Farmers’ is urgently needed. The organic sector needs to partner with our like-minded allies to develop and run this campaign. Consumers and traders must actively support their local and national organic farmers by paying fair prices rather than the lowest price for their products.

The Billion Agave Project Expanding to the Mixteca Region

Biocultural recovery based on environmentally, socially and economically sustainable productive projects.
  • The Secretary of SEFADER and other personalities assisted the event, a collaboration agreement was signed between Regeneration International and CEDICAM.
  • Agave and its multiple uses, a driving force for sustainable development in the region
  • The social, academic, public and private sectors join the project

On April 9, 2024, at the Center of Integral Campesino Development of La Mixteca (CEDICAM) in Asunción de Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, Mexico, Regeneration International (RI) and CEDICAM signed a collaboration agreement to implement the Billion Agave Project (BAP) in the Mixteca, a region with a strong presence of indigenous communities and a significant loss of biodiversity due to erosion and climate change, among other factors.

CEDICAM is a campesino organization made up of Mixtec indigenous people with a solid track record of social and environmental commitment. Since 1997 it has worked on the implementation of sustainable agriculture, the promotion of good nutrition, health care, soil conservation and the reforestation of thousands of hectares of forest, work that has earned its founder and general director, Jesús León Santos, the 2008 Goldman Prize.

The BAP, with a focus on economic, social and environmental sustainability and in collaboration with the social, community, academic, private and public sectors, aims to contribute to the preservation of the environment and the holistic improvement of living conditions in the communities, through the creation and implementation of various wide-ranging productive projects that take full advantage of and add value to one of the most deeply rooted crops in Oaxacan culture: agaves.

One of the main reasons why the BAP has aroused the interest of Mixtec communities is that it offers a viable solution to one of the main problems facing the region: the loss of the ecosystem’s capacity to provide sufficient feed for productive animals. This fact forces farmers to reduce or even abandon animal husbandry, as the purchase of feed is not an option for most people, given the weak economic situation faced in the region. Most worryingly, the difficulty or impossibility of raising animals puts the food security of the indigenous communities of the Mixteca at risk.

Addressing this problem, the BAP proposes agroecological model plantations based on agave, leucaena and other species -all of them with millenary cultural roots- to produce a feed of high nutritional value for animals, such as agave silage enriched with legume protein. The advantages of this project, among others such as soil improvement and carbon sequestration, are that both water demand and costs are significantly low. In addition, the agave landscape that once characterized the Mixteca would be recovered, and with it, the possibility of obtaining mead for tepache and pulque, and stalks for barbecue, which are uses, among many others, that have ancestrally occurred in the area.

The event was attended by the general director of CEDICAM, Jesús León Santos, the coordinator of the BAP, Arturo Carrillo, the director of Technology Management of the Center for Scientific Research of Yucatán (CICY), Javier García Villalobos, the representative of the indigenous communities of the Mixteca, Maximina Montesinos Santiago, the president of the Board of Directors of CEDICAM, Elaeazar García Jiménez, and the head of the Ministry of Agri-Food Promotion and Rural Development of Oaxaca (SEFADER), Víctor López Leyva.

(from left to right) Luis Arturo Carrillo Sánchez, BAP coordinator; Jesús León Santos, general director of CEDICAM; Maximina Montesinos Santiago, representative of the indigenous communities of the Mixteca; Elaeazar García Jiménez, president of the CEDICAM Board of Directors; Víctor López Leyva, secretary of SEFADER and Javier García Villalobos, director of Technology Management at CICY.

During the presentation, Jesús León Santos commented that the signing of the agreement between RI and CEDICAM means the start of a very important process for the Mixteca, where the presence of rainfall is limited and therefore peasant agriculture is always at risk due to drought, early frosts and poor soils. A project that focuses its efforts on the intercropping of agaves and forage forest trees sets a very important precedent, because they are plants that are able to adapt to conditions of low rainfall and develop in soils poor in organic matter. On the other hand, it represents an opportunity to conserve such an important species as the pulque agaves, linked to the peasant culture, not only for the pulque, but for all the products and by-products obtained from this plant. In this way, while generating a mechanism for the integral use of both agaves and fodder trees, it can generate economic opportunities for the farming families of the region, and he added that CEDICAM, together with RI and the participating farmers, will use all our capacities so that this project contributes to the recovery of the landscape and the improvement in the quality of life of the families.

In his speech, Arturo Carrillo also explained that the BAP consists of implementing various agave production and marketing projects that recover the culture of integral use that the native communities have had since long ago and that generate sustainable economic, environmental and social solutions in the regions where they are implemented. He added that the strategy is to develop these projects initially in five implementation hubs: 1) the Vía Orgánica Ranch in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, 2) at the ranch El Mexicano in collaboration with Sarape CircuLab in Guadalajara, Jalisco; 3) at the Hacienda Sotuta de Peón in Yucatán; 4) in Suchixtlán, Oaxaca with the Koch Foundation and 5) at CEDICAM in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca. He also mentioned that some of these productive projects are the extraction and commercialization of inulin and lactic acid, the formulation of feed for productive and affective animals, the production of fermented and distilled products, and the production of molasses and syrup, among others, and all of them are being developed based on scientific and technological research of the highest level in collaboration with institutions such as the CICY or the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco (CIATEJ) and in close relationship with the native communities, who possess invaluable ancestral knowledge about their territory. He concluded by commenting that this type of project can only be developed in a harmonious collaboration between the social, community, academic, private and public sectors, for this reason -he stressed- an indispensable component on which we are working hard, is the link with these sectors.

Javier García Villalobos commented that CICY has made clear its intention to participate in the Billion Agave Project not only in the Yucatán region, but also in the state of Oaxaca. Particularly for the Mixtec region, CICY proposes, on one hand, to develop projects for the holistic use of both mezcal agaves and magueys to produce pulque, as well as to be a supplier of the plants for the implementation of the project, which will be produced in its Biofactory “Dr. Manuel L. Robert” and that present characteristics that provide advantages to the different segments of the value chain such as: reduction in the time for their maturation and the conservation of the organoleptic characteristics necessary for the production of by-products from these crops of national and international importance, just to mention a few.

In her turn, Maximina Montesinos Santiago commented that from the position of the women of the communities of the Mixteca region, the implementation of a project of this type will contribute significantly to the recovery of the soil and it is expected to improve the economy of the participating families, but more importantly, it will strengthen our culture linked to the agaves, such as the food, medicinal and related aspects of our local traditions. On the other hand, there are undoubtedly many products that can be obtained from agaves and this represents a great opportunity for our people and especially for women, in a region where there is no income due to lack of job opportunities, the mere fact of producing fodder from agaves, can profoundly change our culture of feeding our animals, providing them with better quality fodder. We women joined this project with the hope of changing our situation and demonstrating that it is possible to improve our quality of life through our ancestral crops.

Eleazar García commented that the agreement being signed will be of great benefit to the region and that CEDICAM will do everything possible to contribute to its success.

To close the speeches, the Secretary of SEFADER, Víctor López Leyva, expressed that the recovery of the agave culture in Oaxaca constitutes the opportunity to provide concrete answers of responsible development to the issues of environmental deterioration caused by deforestation and the careless opening of new territories to the cultivation of mezcal magueys, He concluded by affirming that “when an alliance is made with academia, the public and private sectors to rescue productive activities related to agaves, their preservation and durability, we are undoubtedly on the road to doing justice to the Oaxacan countryside”.

Also in attendance were several municipal presidents from the region and thirty community representatives.

To close the event, a delicious Mixteco-style barbecue was offered as a meal, accompanied by handmade native corn tortillas and pulque and tepache as a beverage.