Monthly Newsletter – Vía Orgánica

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MONTHLY NEWSLETTER VÍA ORGÁNICA

For Organic Regenerative Agriculture, Fair Trade,
Social Justice, Sustainable Living and Sustainable Production

Ranch News

EDUCATIONAL RANCH VÍA ORGÁNICA

Billion Agave Project: An Agroecological Proposal for Semi-arid Zones 

The Billion Agave Project is an innovative strategy that consists of the association of trees or shrubs of leguminous species interspersed in strips with annual crops or perennial grasses. The woody elements are pruned periodically to prevent them from giving too much shade to the crops and the pruning are used as green manure for the soil and to enrich the forage derived from the pruning of the agave leaves, which are used from the third year.

This project begins its second season. There have been several challenges and lessons learned, however, much progress has been made in the following steps and scopes.

At the beginning of the mesquite plantation, small trees from one year to 1.5 years old with an approximate size of 60 to 80 cm were established, however, in most of the areas where they were established they were possibly cut down by field mice or hares. This made us pay more attention and emphasis on mesquite propagation using the layering technique, which was promoted about 20 years ago by Dr. Rafael Ramírez Malagón. This technique allows mesquite to be propagated from different trees and with different characteristics to choose from: pod size, quantity, flavor, size, tree health, etc. Once we select the trees, we make ring-shaped cuts in the bark of the branches destined to become trees. Subsequently, we placed the first field layers associated with maguey lines. These branches have resisted establishment in the field, equaling in size to trees of 3 to 4 years, with this the processes of establishment of the species and therefore of soil regeneration are advanced. It is important to mention that this project integrates the species described above into the landscape without the need to remove the current vegetation to regenerate the soil, diversify the landscape and the productivity of this system.

Among the established agave varieties, the following stand out: Agave Salmiana var, Salmiana, Crassispina, Americana and Mapisaga.  

It is important to mention that the lands where this system was established were slightly eroded, overgrazed or simply lands of traditional milpa cultivation.

The second stage begins and now that mesquite layering is part of the annual planning of activities in the Agroecology Park, there is a special season for layering after the hibernation season (from November to the end of January). Many of the layers obtained have been used to replenish the spaces with maguey and we already have some specimens that have been established for a year. This will guarantee the works of reforestation and establishment of the precursor vegetation.

The following activities are planned for this second stage:

1.- Development and layering of mesquite for reforestation.
2.- Propagation of agaves by seeds in raised beds.
3.- Propagation of other native legume species such as guajes, palo blanco, tepame and huizaches.
4.- Establishment of more than 1,500 layers of mesquite.
5.- Replacement of maguey plant.
6.- More than 30,000 magueyes established in Vía Orgánica and other communities.
7.- Exploration of new forest species.
8.- Establishment of the native grassland.
9.- Sowing of cover crops.
10.- Maguey and mesquite forage diet for small ruminants.
11.- Mesquite layer acclimatization nursery.
12.- Integration of the maguey to the forest model of the Regenerative Farm.
13.- Design of informative visual material.
14.- A campaign has been promoted to collect mesquite pods.
15.- A constant maguey fodder production rate has been established, close to 70 tons per year of fodder. A fact that is only possible with the maguey plant in a semi-arid zone.
16.- Groups of producers, students, technicians, organizations and schools have been received to learn about the billion agaves and their benefits.
18.- Experimental or demonstrative spaces have been promoted in other communities with the planting of maguey.
19.- The first Agaves and Mesquites Diploma: Regenerating Semi-arid Zones was designed and is being worked on jointly with the University of Guanajuato.

These are some of the relevant activities of The Billion Agave Project that will serve as a basis and guide to execute the next steps to follow.

One of the constant tasks has been learning and training, especially for the young people who have participated from the beginning and the alliances and links with other organizations, projects and schools, in order to complement the research and expand the opportunity to have maguey and mesquite as an agroecology proposal suitable for a semi-arid landscape so common in recent decades. 

It is important to remember that both maguey and mesquite are pioneers in plant succession, that is, they allow other vegetation to establish itself by stopping and regenerating the soil. This gives way to the development of secondary species such as grasses, herbs and shrubs, even medicinal or melliferous.

By living together, these plants generate different environmental services, promote diversity by needing pollinators, and form a habitat for the native fauna responsible for biological control. This system produces large volumes of biomass that could undoubtedly be a substitute for other forages that require large amounts of water, what to say about the derivatives obtained as food, fibers, firewood, distillates, flour, handicrafts, sweets, landscaping, etc. This set of plants, as Dr. Luis Parra mentions: “They should be considered as first-class plants and not second or third, as they are the most suitable for producing high volumes of biomass in the face of the effects of climate change.”

 

We share this article written by Patricia Zavala Gutierrez for the Global Press Journal entitled “Mezcal producers recycle the waste generated by this spirit drink” where they talk about our project.

COME AND VISIT

DO IT YOURSELF!

Recommendations for your garden during the rainy season: 

– Uncover the beds, let the rain wash and nourish the leaves of your crops.
– Cut the flowers of your plants so that you allow them to give more buttons and flowers.
– Monitor your garden, sometimes surprise plants appear that sprout thanks to humidity.
– If you have earthworm humus or mountain microorganisms, apply them by spray, especially on cloudy days or after a rain.
– If your soil is quite moist, just plant and fertilize or transplant and fertilize, but don’t move it and less rotate it.
– It is important to prune basal leaves in some crops to promote the development of new leaves or the entry of light. Only if necessary and if not, the same leaves keep humidity and are the protective roof of the microbiology of the soil.
– If you begin to see the first grasshoppers or miniature grasshoppers, just apply 100 ml of nixtamal nejayote in 1 liter of water to prevent them from affecting you too much.

COOKING TIME

SALAD OF EXQUISITE PURSLANE

INGREDIENTS

– 2 cups of raw and freshly cut leafless purslane
– 2 tablespoons of raisins
– Sprinkled toasted sesame seeds
– A splash of olive oil
– 1 sliced ​​apple

INSTRUCTIONS

Mix your leaves and raisins, add a tablespoon of olive oil olive oil, add the apple and serve in a bowl, sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Enjoy your salad at all hours and remember that purslane only grows in this season.

AUGUST ACTIVITIES

SEPTEMBER ACTIVITIES

JOIN THE ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION CAMP AT THE VÍA ORGÁNICA RANCH IN MEXICO
FROM SEPTEMBER 5-11, 2022

DON’T FORGET TO VISIT US!

Remember that we are open from 8 am to 6 pm
Carretera México/ Querétaro, deviation on the way to Jalpa, km 9
Agroecological Park Vía Orgánica.
For information on our products, seeds and harvest,
call our store at 442 757 0490.
Every Saturday and Sunday nixtamalized tortilla with Creole and local corn!
Enjoy our sweet and sour kale chips for children and not so children!

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The Nitrogen Problem in Agriculture

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Reduce the use of chemical fertilisers, make the chemical industry pay for pollution instead of criminalising farmers who were trapped by in the chemical treadmill  through industrial agriculture

The nitrogen problem in Agriculture is a problem created by synthetic nitrogen fertilisers made from fossil fuels. Nitrogen fertilisers contribute to atmospheric pollution and climate change in the manufacture and the use of fertilisers.

The manufacture of synthetic fertiliser is highly energy intensive. One kg of nitrogen fertiliser requires the energy equivalent of 2 litres of diesel. Energy used during fertiliser manufacture was equivalent to 191 billion litres of diesel in 2000 and is projected to rise to 277 billion in 2030. This is a major contributor to climate change, yet largely ignored. One kilogram of phosphate fertiliser requires half a litre of diesel.[1]

Nitrogen fertilisers also emit a greenhouse gas, N2O, which is 300 times more destabilising for the Climate System than CO2.

Nine planetary boundaries (Steffen et al. 2015)

The linear extractive agriculture system based on fossil fuels is rupturing ecological processes and planetary boundaries. The 3 planetary boundaries that have been transgressed to a danger zone are Biodiversity and nitrogen pollution from chemical fertilisers. The most severe violations of planetary boundaries is due to fossil fuel, chemical intensive industrial globalised agriculture -the disruption of Biodiversity Integrity and Genetic Diversity leading to biodiversity loss and species extinction and the biochemical nitrogen and phosphorus cycles caused by large scale monocultures and large scale use of chemical pesticides Erosion of genetic diversity and the transgression of the nitrogen boundary have already crossed catastrophic levels. All three overshoots are rooted in the chemical intensive, fossil fuel intensive industrial model of agriculture. 93% of cultivated crops have disappeared.

The scientific and just response to the nitrogen problem is to shift from fossil fuel chemical agriculture to biodiverse ecological agriculture and regenerative farming and to create transition strategies for farmers to shift to ecological agriculture which regenerates soil nitrogen while making farmers free of harmful and costly chemicals. Chemical free food is good for the Health of the Planet and People. [2]

The unscientific, unjust, and undemocratic response to the chemical industry created nitrogen problem is to reduce farmers instead of reducing dependence on chemical fertilisers as is happening in the Netherlands. [3]

To reduce chemical fertiliser use, governments need to make the fertiliser industry pay for nitrogen pollution, and redirect subsidies from industrial agriculture to ecological farming. Criminalising farmers for the crimes of the chemical industry is unfair and unjust. We need more farmers, not less, to regenerate the earth through an economy of care and belonging, and to produce real food which regenerates the health of the planet and our health.

There is a dystopian vision of a future of “Farming with farmers”, a digital agriculture with larger farms, more fertiliser use, more biodiversity loss.

While creating “Farming without Farmers” billionaires like Bill Gates are promoting more synthetic fertiliser use, aggravating the nitrogen problem.

Gates is promoting nitrogen fertilisers and chemical intensive GMO soya as raw material for  lab made fake food which is being labelled as “plant based”. [4]

Source: Gates Notes

The billionaire recipe is to have larger chemical intensive monoculture artificially fertilised by synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, which will emit nitrous oxide, a greenhouse Gas.

In total denial of climate science and the soil ecology, Gates is continuing the “chemical hocus pocus” when he says we need to use more fertiliser.

“To grow crops, you want tons of nitrogen-way more than you would ever find in a natural setting. Adding nitrogen is how you get corn to grow 19 feet tall and produce enormous quantities of seed”[5]

This statement is scientifically and ecologically false.

Soil is a living system. There are multiple pathways to regenerate the Soil and Soil Nitrogen and heal the nitrogen cycle.

The living soil was forgotten for an entire century with very high costs to nature and society. Soil was defined as an “empty container” for pouring synthetic fertilisers into, which were falsely seen as the source of soil fertility. “Bread from air” was the slogan after the discovery of the Haber Bosch process for fixing atmospheric nitrogen by burning fossil fuels. The illusion grew that we did not need soil.

There was the exaggerated claim that artificial fertilisers would increase food production and remove all ecological limits that land puts on agriculture. Today the evidence is growing that artificial fertilisers have reduced soil fertility and food production and contributed to desertification, water scarcity and climate change. They have created dead zones in the oceans.

The Process used to make explosives by burning fossil fuels at high temperature to fix atmospheric nitrogen were later used to make chemical fertilisers.

Justus von Liebig was the father of organic chemistry, the first scientist to explain the role of nitrogen in plants, which was quickly appropriated by greed for commerce. A new industry was created for external inputs of nitrogen, dubbed as “growth stimulants”. Outraged at the distortion of his scientific findings, in 1861 wrote a book, ”The Search for Agricultural Recycling”.

Liebig’s book was the voice of a true scientist, protecting his truth from distortions of a pseudo-science being created by commercial interests. As he writes “I thought it would be enough to just announce and spread the truth as is customary in science. I finally came to understand that this wasn’t right, and the altars of lies must be destroyed if we wish to give truth a fair chance.” The truth that Liebig was defending was that the soil is living, and its life depends on recycling, or what Sir Albert Howard later called “The Law of Return” in his “An Agricultural Testament” nearly half a century later. The lie he wanted to destroy was what he called the “chemical hocus pocus”, that you can keep extracting nutrients from the soil, giving nothing back, and have “high yields”.

Selling more fertilisers is good for the profits of the chemical industry, but it is not good for the soil or the climate. It violates nature’s law of return. And it denies farmers the ecological alternatives to regenerate and renew soil nitrogen.

Farmers did not create the nitrogen problem. The problem is created by the chemical industry. According to the Polluter pays principle, the chemical industry must pay for the pollution. Farmers are consumers of fertilisers, not the manufacturers. They are victims of a chemical intensive industrial agriculture system, like the biodiversity of plants, and animals, and the consumers whose health is degenerating with industrial food style chronic diseases. The planet and people need more farmers, not less.

Sacrificing farmers pretending to address the nitrogen problem is dishonest because it blames the farmers for a problem created by the chemical industry. It is dishonest and inconsistent to say farms and farms must be reduced while continuing to promote the use of chemical fertilisers as Gates, the Chemical Industry and governments are doing.

While the chemical industry has spread the myth that chemical fertilisers are necessary for food production and address hunger, they have destroyed biodiversity by promoting monoculture, and they have contributed to desertification of soil by destroying the biodiversity of living soil. The destruction of soil organic matter destroys the capacity of soil to conserve moisture, thereby creating the need for intensive irrigation, and therefore further disrupting the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles.

Our practice and research at Navdanya over the last two decades shows the regenerative ecological agriculture builds up soil nitrogen, while synthetic fertilisers deplete it. [6]

Reducing fertiliser use does not reduce yields.[7]

The more nitrogen fertiliser you use the more you must use, because nitrogen fertilisers kill the live organisms in the soil.

Fertiliser response has dramatically reduced. Sharma and Sharma (2009) mentioned about the declining fertiliser response for the last thirty years from 13. 4 kg grain kg nutrient in 1970 to 3. 7 kg grain kg nutrient in 2005 in irrigated areas. According to Biswas and Sharma (2008) while only 54 kg NPK / ha was required to produce around 2 t /ha in 1970, around 218 kg NPK/ha was used in 2005 to sustain the same yield.

Chemical fertilisers are leading to a decline in productivity because they are destroying soil health. During three and half decades, fertiliser productivity has declined from 48 kg food grains/kg NPK fertiliser in 1970-71 to 10 kg food grains/kg NPK fertiliser in 2007-08.[8]

Since synthetic fertilisers are fossil fuel based, they contribute to the disruption of the carbon cycle. But they also disrupt the nitrogen cycle. And they disrupt the hydrological cycle, both because chemical agriculture needs ten times more water to produce the same amount of food than organic farming, and it pollutes the water in rivers and oceans.

Pulses fix nitrogen non-violently in the soil, instead of increasing dependence on synthetic fertilisers produced violently by heating fossil fuels to 550 degrees centigrade. Chick-pea can fix up to 140 kg nitrogen per hectare and pigeon-pea can fix up to 200 kg nitrogen per hectare that fix nitrogen non-violently.

Returning organic matter to the soil builds up soil nitrogen. A recent study we are undertaking shows that organic farming has increased nitrogen content of soil between 44-144 %, depending on the crops.

Since war expertise does not provide expertise about how plants work, how the soil works, how ecological processes work, the potential of biodiversity and or- ganic farming was totally ignored by the militarised model of industrial agriculture. [9]

To address the nitrogen problem, we need to bring back biodiversity in farming.

Farming did not begin with the green revolution and synthetic nitrogen fertilisers. Whether it is the diversity based systems of India-Navdanya, Baranaja, or the three sisters planted by the first nations in North America, or the ancient Milpa system of Mexico, beans and pulses were vital to indigenous agroecological systems.

As Sir Albert Howard, known as the father of modern agriculture, writes in “An Agricultural Testament, comparing agriculture in the West with Agriculture in India:

“Mixed crops are the rule. In this respect the cultivators of the Orient have followed Nature’s method as seen in the primeval forest. Mixed cropping is perhaps most universal when the cereal crop is the main constituent. Crops like millets, wheat, barley, and maize are mixed with an appropriate subsidiary pulse, sometimes a species that ripens much later than the cereal. The pigeon pea (cajanusindicus), perhaps the most important leguminous crop of the Gangetic alluvium, is grown either with millets or with maize. . . Leguminous plants are common. Although it was not until 1888, after a protracted controversy lasting thirty years, that Western science finally accepted as proved the important role played by pulse crops in enriching the soil, centuries of experience had taught the peasants of the east the same lesson.”[10]

Vegetable protein from pulses is also at the heart of a balanced, nutritious diet for humans. The Benevolent Bean is central to the Mediterranean diet. India’s food culture is based on “dal roti” and “dal chawal”. Urad, moong, masoor, chana, rajma, tur, lobia, gahat have been our staples. India was the largest producer of pulses in the world. And our proteins are rich in nutrition, delicious in taste.

Pulses have been displaced by the Green Revolution monoculture, and now the spread of monocultures of Bt cotton.

The nitrogen problem due to synthetic nitrogen fertilisers is real. Uprooting farmers is a false, violent, unjust solution. Governments that have subsidised and promoted the fertiliser industry now need to shift public tax money to regenerative agroecology that is chemical free. New Agroecology schools need to be open for farmers to make a transition to ecological agriculture over a 3–5-year period. We need democratic debates on the use of public money to serve the public good, not private greed. Since how we grow our food impacts our health and the health of the planet, growers and eaters of food need to join hands to regenerate the health of the soil and communities.

The Living Soil is the answer to the Nitrogen problem. To regenerate living soil, we need regenerators. Farmers are the custodians and caretakers of the land. We need to create a new culture of Earth Care in agriculture. Getting rid of farmers is an extinction and extermination project which has no place in free, democratic just societies.

(To learn more, Join Return to Earth – AZ of Biodiversity, Agroecology, Regenerative Organic Food Systems, course of Navdanya, 1 – 12 October 2022).

References

[1] Shiva V., Soil Not Oil, 2008

[2] Shiva V., “Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture: Sustainable Solutions for Hunger, Poverty, and Climate Change”, Synergetic Press, 2022 https://synergeticpress.com/catalog/agroecology-and-regenerative-agriculture-sustainable-solutions-for-hunger-poverty-and-climate-change/

[3] Gus, Camille. ‘Police Fire on Dutch Farmers Protesting Environmental Rules’. POLITICO, 6 July 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/police-fire-dutch-farmer-protest-nitrogen-emission-cut/

[4] Gates, Bill. ‘Why I Love Fertilizer’. Gatesnotes.Com, https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Why-I-love-fertilizer

[5] Gates, Bill, How to avoid a Climate Disaster, Allen Lane, 2021 – pg 123

[6] Navdanya, “Seeds of Hope, Seeds of Resilience”. 2017 https://navdanyainternational.org/publications/seeds-of-hope-seeds-of-resilience/

[7] Harvey, Fiona, and Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent. ‘Using Far Less Chemical Fertiliser Still Produces High Crop Yields, Study Finds’. The Guardian, 27 June 2022. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/27/using-far-less-chemical-fertiliser-still-produces-high-crop-yields-study

[8] Aulakh, M. S. and Benbi, D. K. 2008. Enhancing fertiliser use efficiency. In  Proceedings of FAI Annual Seminar 2008, 4-6 December, 2008. The Fertilizer Association of India, New Delhi, India. pp. SII-4 (1-23).

Subba Rao, A. and Reddy, K. S. 2009. Implications of soil fertility to meet future demand: Indian scenario. In Proceedings of the IPI-OUAT-IPNI International Symposium on Potassium Role and Benefits in Improving Nutrient Management for Food Production, Quality and Reduced Environmental Damages, Vol. 1 (Eds. MS Brar and SS Mukhopadhyay), 5-7 November 2009. IPI, Horgen, Switzerland and IPNI, Norcross, USA. pp. 109-135.

[9] Navdanya, “Pulse of Life”, 2016. https://navdanyainternational.org/publications/pulse-of-life-the-rich-biodiversity-of-edible-legumes/

[10]Sir Albert Howard. An Agricultural Testament. pg 13

Regeneration International’s Perspective of the UNCCD COP15 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

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Abidjan: On the 20 of May 2022, 196 countries ratified an agreement under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification to neutralize land degradation and restore 1 billion hectares of land globally by 2030. Many experts see this as a vital target equivalent to the 2C global warming threshold of the UNFCCC Paris Agreement. Countries need to set themselves for new policies and frameworks to contribute to and sustain resilient landscapes in the era of anthropogenic climate change. However, from the perspective of the realities of the ground, it is not enough. Although reaching a consensus on a target is essential, on-field implementation plans are crucial to leverage countries toward their Land Degradation Neutrality (and reversal) goals – and regrettably, none were promised or put forward by any party during this COP. 

 

However, the conference broadly highlighted the importance of agroecology in tackling desertification, a first for the UNCCD COP. A draft statement on agroecology was made by civil society calling for agroecology to be funded and for states to provide better support for agroecological youth enterprises to facilitate access to land for women and young people.

 

A Gender Caucus was also led by the first ladies of Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, underlined the importance of women’s rights, gender equality, land tenure security for women in agriculture.

 

With billions of dollars in aid and development from first-world countries for large-scale restoration initiatives such as the Great Green Wall launched by the African Union, many developing country representatives came together at COP15 to obtain funding for their respective programs. At the same time, civil society, scientists, and researchers who are working on the ground but are not at the center of the negotiations worked tirelessly to present and recommend scalable and mostly low-cost solutions adapted to local contexts of land, people, and climate. Sadly enough, many small NGOs invested a lot of time and resources to give statements in the plenary and present best practices for land-based, community-driven solutions and deserved to be given a pedestal on the front stage during the plenary sessions of the high-level segments. But unfortunately, they were everywhere but at the center of the UNCCD COP.

 

To match the COP’s theme “From Scarcity to Prosperity”, Regeneration International sent a small delegation to present Agave Agroforestry systems and the work of its sister organization Vía Organíca in San Miguel Allende in Mexico. Scheduled on a Friday evening after a whole week of the conference, we received a tiny yet tightly focused audience that thankfully saw some commitment and pledges to implement a scalable land regeneration project on a Great Green Wall program. 

 

Despite having a small crowd and an unpopular timeslot, we are very excited about this outcome. It can influence the whole Sahel region and provide ongoing support to farmer-led, assisted natural regeneration projects by helping dryland herders relieve livestock suffering from drought, famine, and lethal temperatures, rehydrate landscapes, and re-carbonize soils.
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During our event, we had interventions from Dr.Paul Luu, the Executive Secretary, and Claudia Schepp of the International “4 per 1000” Initiative. He highlighted the importance of Regeneration International’s work. In addition, he raised the vital need for Both RI and the “4 per 1000” to gain access to funding for scaling up regenerative agriculture globally through partners such as Vía Organica and the municipality of San Miguel Allende. 

 

Since 2007, 19 billion Euros have been injected into the Great Green Wall, and since 2021, France is providing another 14 billion Euros for its completion across 11 nations. So far, countries like Niger and Ethiopia have managed well to achieve their goals. Yet, many countries are challenged by social and political instability, unadapted policies, and corruption that sees enormous amounts of funding disappear into thin air before reaching anyone on the ground.

 

For land regeneration projects to be successful, sound community governance is essential, and the people on the ground need adequate resources and technical support, sustainable incomes, and access to land. 

In an exclusive interview with Sena Alouka of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), we discussed the Billions of US Dollars in Agricultural Development that mainly go towards conventional agriculture with modern technologies such as genetically modified seeds and chemical inputs, and machinery. How big funders are used to working with industry and not familiar with small-scale farmers. When organizations such as the World Bank, IFAD, and FAO define climate-smart agriculture practices as agroecological ones, it gets even more challenging for the real agroecologists to see any funding at all.

 

Governments and conventions aside, small hold rural farmers are the main ones who can ensure countries reach their pledges to restore land and fix the climate. In 2022 and beyond, Regeneration International is working with its partners for agroecology and regenerative organic agriculture to gain momentum and empower farmers in the developing world. Join the movement!

Covid, Climate, Chemicals and Debt: The Perfect Storm that hit Sri Lanka

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Sri Lanka, Serendip, the jewel in the Indian Ocean is facing a severe political and economic crisis.

The crisis has multiple roots but has intensified in the last 2 years with Covid, Climate change, the debt crisis, the contribution of chemical fertilisers to debt, climate emissions and climate vulnerability.

The protests we are witnessing now are triggered by an economy of greed, creation of a debt trap and rent collection, rising costs of living and ordinary citizens facing an economic crisis of survival. Such protests  were common sights across the world in 2019 before Covid and the lock down. Recall Beirut and Chile. When the cost of living becomes unbearable, people rise. And across the world countries are being trapped in debt to generate billions for the billionaires and banks.

Sri Lanka is facing a serious debt and foreign exchange crisis. This is a direct result of the Neo liberal policies of corporate globalisation that make countries borrow more and more for the Infrastructure of Profits -ports, power plants, highways, resorts – end up in a debt trap, and are forced to pay more for essentials.

Sri Lanka’s foreign debt is at $12.55 billion with the Asian Development Bank, Japan and China among the  major lenders.

My mind goes Susan George’s book A Fate Worse than Debt.

Over the last decade China has lent Sri Lanka more than $5 billion for the construction of highways, ports, an airport and a coal power plant.

47% of Sri Lanka’s external debt stock is owed to international capital markets, 22% is held by multilateral development banks, followed by Japan having 10% of Sri Lankan external debt.

China accounted for 30% of all Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in big projects in Sri Lanka from 2012-16.

According to Gateway House Chinese debt and equity are funding more than 50 projects worth more than $11 billion. Most are roads and water treatment plants, but the largest projects are the Hambantota Port, the Colombo Port City and the Lakavijaya thermal power plant – all three funded by Chinese government-owned banks and being built by Chinese contractors.

As Amit Bhandari and Chandni Jindal of  Gateway House write:

“During 2017, Sri Lanka’s government spent 83% of its revenues on debt repayment, a quarter of which was for foreign borrowings. The country’s external debt repayments are projected to double from $2.1 billion in 2017 to $3.3-$4.2 billion annually from 2019-22. It is not surprising that Sri Lanka chose to convert some of this debt into equity and hand over Hambantota to China Port Holding in 2017”.

In February 2022, the country had only $2.31 in foreign exchange reserves, too little to cover its import costs and debt repayment obligations of $ 4 billion.

A foreign exchange crisis has led to the inability of the government to pay for imports of essential Commodities including fuel. The dependence on fossil fuel imports has led to an economic crisis, with power cuts of up to 13 hours and galloping inflation after the currency was devalued.

The 22 million citizens of Sri Lanka are facing a crisis of survival, and have risen in protest against the government. Ministers  have resigned. Emergency rule has been declared. The country is surviving on credit.

Sri Lanka’s capacity to pay back its loans with interests was badly hit with COVID. Covid aggravated the crisis.Tourism and foreign workers remittances was one of Sri Lanka’s main foreign exchange earners. The pandemic dried up both.  Foreign exchange reserves plummeted by almost 70 percent in two years.

In 2019, contribution of travel and tourism to GDP (% of GDP) for Sri Lanka was 12.6 %. Contribution of travel and tourism to GDP (% of GDP) of Sri Lanka increased from 6 % in 2000 to 12.6 % in 2019 growing at an average annual rate of 4.28%.

Tourism which had increased from 6% in 2000 to 12.9 % in 2019, collapsed by 70.8% due to Covid.

The Ukraine crisis has further amplified the crisis with oil prices and fertiliser prices rising. Sri Lanka has turned to the IMF, India and China for credit. The devaluation of the Sri Lankan currency was part of the IMF restructuring demand.

In February, India sent diesel shipments under a $500 million credit line. Sri Lanka and India have signed a $2  billion credit line for importing essentials, including food and medicine.

China provided the Central Bank of Sri Lanka  with a $1.5 billion swap and a $1.3 billion syndicated loan to the government. China is considering offering the island nation a $1.5 billion credit facility and a separate loan of up to $1 billion. 

Climate havoc which affects South Asia most severely has also intensified Sri Lanka’s food crisis.

South Asia is economically and ecologically rich due to monsoons. Climate Change is severely impacting the monsoons, and with it agricultural production. According to the latest IPCC report, for every 1% increase in temperature,intense and extreme events related to  South Asian monsoon will increase by 7%.

Since 2009  my writings like Soil not Oil written for the Copenhagen Climate Summit showed that a commodity-based fossil fuel intensive, chemical intensive, capital intensive agriculture and food system has contributed 50% of the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate havoc and threatening agriculture

11-15% from Agricultural production,

15-18% from deforestation,

15-20% from processing and long distance transport through global supply chains,

2-4% waste.

“View of central highlands of Sri Lanka ” by Satheesha J., licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

We cannot address climate change, and its very real consequences, without recognising the central role of the industrial and globalised food system, which contributes more than 50% to greenhouse gas emissions through deforestation, animals in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), plastics and aluminum packaging, long distance transport and food waste.

“Food and climate impacts go both ways. Climate change creates significant risks to the food system, with rising temperatures and changing weather patterns threatening enormous damage to crops, supply chains and livelihoods in the decades ahead”.[1] [2]

Unstable weather has contributed to the Sri Lankan crisis.

A study published on “Climate change and food security in Sri Lanka: towards food sovereignty” published in Nature argues that promoting food sovereignty could be the key to alleviating  impacts.of Climate Change.

Synthetic chemical fertilisers emit nitrous oxide which is 300 times more damaging to the climate than CO2. Imports of synthetic fertilisers were also a big drain on Sri Lanka’s scarce foreign exchange reserves.

The Ukraine war is making it worse. Fertliser, fuel and food prices are rising everywhere. The Poison Cartel which gains from selling costly fertilisers are using the crises to undo all the steps countries have taken to create agriculture policies which are free of fossil fuels, fossil fuel based chemicals, are resilient to climate change of which 50% contributions come from  the industrial, globalised food system which is also more vulnerable to Climate Change.

In Europe the chemical industry is trying to undo the Farm to Fork policies.

They are portraying the Sri  Lankan crisis as related to a  few months’ stop in import of chemical fertilisers in April 2021. The ban was due to Sri Lanka’s debt crisis. A ban on imports does not automatically translate into policies for Food Sovereignty. Food sovereignty requires transition to ecological agriculture, in practice, in research and in policy. Cuba managed the fuel and fertiliser crisis triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union through a transition of Organic Agriculture supported by policy and research.

Covid, Climate and Chemicals have created a perfect storm in Sri Lanka. The storm could impact any country that is being recolonised by a debt trap. Reclaiming economic sovereignty, beginning with food sovereignty, are the solution to pandemics, climate resilience, freedom from debt, fossil fuels, and chemicals.

The Sri Lanka crisis makes visible the high costs of Covid born by citizens, while billionaires walked away richer by $1.5 trillion.

Sri Lanka makes visible the high costs of Climate Injustice.

It also makes visible the high costs of dependence on foreign investments and borrowing to build costly infrastructure that benefits a few, while most citizens pay a very high price through the destruction of the infrastructure of Life – both the ecological infrastructure of a stable climate, and the economic infrastructure of a guarantee of basic needs.

Localisation instead of corporate globalisation, ecological sustainability and sovereignty instead of fossil fuel intensive, capital intensive, debt intensive economies are the path to peace and freedom, resilience and self reliance  – for individuals, communities, countries and the planet.

Ref.

[1] C. Mbow et al., “Food Security,” in Climate Change and Land (IPCC, 2019), https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/.

[2] Sandalow D. et al., Food and Climate Change InfoGuide, Columbia SIPA – Center on Global Energy Policy, May 2021, https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/article/food-and-climate-change-infoguide.

Agave Power: Greening the Desert

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Read in Spanish here.

Agave, from the Greek word αγαυή, meaning “noble” or “admirable,” is a common perennial desert succulent, with thick fleshy leaves and sharp thorns. Agave plants evolved originally in Mexico, but are also found today in the hot, arid, and semi-arid drylands of Central America, the Southwestern U.S., South America, Africa, Oceana, and Asia. Agaves are best known for producing textiles (henequen and sisal) from its fibrous leaves, syrup sweeteners, inulin (a food additive), and alcoholic beverages, tequila, pulque, and mescal, from its sizeable stem or piña, pet food supplements and building materials from its fiber, and bio-ethanol from the bagasse or leftover pulp after the piña is distilled.

Agave’s several hundred different varieties are found growing on approximately 20% of the earth’s surface, often growing in the same desertified, degraded cropland or rangeland areas as nitrogen-fixing, deep-rooted trees or shrubs such as mesquite, acacia, or leucaena. Agaves can tolerate intense heat and will readily grow in drylands or semi-desert landscapes where there is a minimum annual rainfall of approximately 10 inches or 250 mm, and can survive temperatures of 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees Celsius).

The several billion small farmers and rural families living in the world’s drylands are often among the most impoverished communities in the world, with increasing numbers being forced to migrate to cities or across borders in search of employment. Decades of corrupt government policies, deforestation, overgrazing, soil erosion, destructive use of agricultural chemicals, and heavy tillage or plowing have severely degenerated the soils, fertility, water retention, and biodiversity of most arid and semi-arid lands. With climate change, limited and unpredictable rainfall, and increasingly degraded soil in these drylands, it has become very difficult to raise traditional food crops (such as corn, beans, and squash in Mexico) or generate sufficient forage and nutrition for animals. Many dryland areas are in danger of degenerating even further into literal desert, unable to sustain any crops or livestock whatsoever. Besides struggling with corrupt or inept officials, degraded landscapes, poverty, and crop failure, and social conflict, drug trafficking, and organized crime often plague these areas, forcing millions to migrate to urban areas or across borders to seek safety and employment.

Agaves

Agaves basically require no irrigation, efficiently storing seasonal rainfall and moisture from the air it in their thick thorny leaves (pencas) and stem or heart (piña) utilizing their Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM) photosynthetic pathway, which enables the plant to grow and produce significant amounts of biomass, even under conditions of severely restricted water availability and prolonged droughts. Agaves reproduce by putting out shoots or hijuelos alongside the mother plant, (approximately 3-4 per year) or through seeds, if the plant is allowed to flower at the end of its 8-13 year (or more) lifespan.

A number of agave varieties appropriate for drylands agroforestry (salmiana, americana, mapisaga, crassipina) readily grow into large plants, reaching a weight of up to 650 kilograms (1400 pounds) in the space of 8-13 years.

Agaves are among the world’s top 15 plants or trees in terms of drawing down large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and producing plant biomass. [Footnote: Park S. Nobel, Desert Wisdom/Agaves and Cacti, p.132] Certain varieties of agave are capable of producing up to 43 tons of dry weight biomass per hectare (17 tons of biomass per acre) or more per year on a continuous basis. In addition, the water use of agaves (and other desert-adapted CAM plants) is typically 4-12 times more efficient than other plants and trees, with average water demand approximately 6 times lower.

Agave-Based Agroforestry

Agave’s nitrogen-fixing, deep-rooted companion trees or shrubs such as mesquite and acacias have adapted to survive in these same dryland environments as well. From an environmental, soil health, and carbon-sequestering perspective, agaves should be cultivated and inter-planted, not as a monoculture, as is commonly done with agave azul (the blue agave species) on tequila plantations in Mexico (often 3,000-4,000 plants per hectare/1215-1600 plants per acre), but as a polyculture. In this polyculture agroforestry system, several varieties of agave are interspersed with native nitrogen-fixing trees or shrubs (such as mesquite or acacias), native vegetation, pasture grass, and cover crops, which fix the nitrogen and nutrients into the soil which the agave needs to draw upon in order to grow and produce significant amounts of biomass/animal forage. If grown as a polyculture, agaves and their companion trees and shrubs can be cultivated on a continuous basis, producing large amounts of biomass for silage and sequestering significant amounts of carbon above ground and below ground (approximately 130 tons of CO2 per hectare on a continuous basis after 10 years), without depleting soil fertility or biodiversity.

In addition to these polyculture practices, planned rotational grazing on these agroforestry pastures, once established, not only provides significant forage for livestock, but done properly (neither overgrazing nor under-grazing, keeping livestock away for several years after initial planting), further improves or regenerates the soil, eliminating dead grasses, invasive species, facilitating water infiltration (in part through ground disturbance i.e. hoof prints), concentrating animal manure and urine, and increasing soil organic matter, soil carbon, biodiversity, and fertility.

Although agave is a plant that grows prolifically in some of the harshest climates in the world, in recent times this plant has been largely ignored, if not outright denigrated. Apart from producing alcoholic beverages, agaves are often considered a plant and livestock pest, along with its thorny, nitrogen-fixing, leguminous companion trees or shrubs such as mesquite and acacias.

But now, the development of a new agave-based agroforestry and holistic livestock management system in the semi-arid drylands of Guanajuato, Mexico, utilizing basic ecosystem restorations techniques, permaculture design, and silage production using anaerobic fermentation, is changing the image of agave and their companion trees. This agave-powered agroforestry and livestock management system is demonstrating that native plants, long overlooked, have the potential to regenerate the drylands, inexpensive feed supplements and essential fermented forage for grazing animals, especially during the dry season, and alleviate rural poverty.

Moving beyond conventional monoculture and chemical-intensive farm practices, and combining the traditional indigenous knowledge of native desert plants and natural fermentation, an innovative group of Mexico-based farmers have learned how to reforest and green their drylands, all without the use of irrigation or expensive and toxic agricultural inputs.

Farmers and researchers have created this new agroforestry program by densely planting, pruning, and inter-cropping high-biomass, high-forage producing species of agaves (1000-2000 per hectare, 405-810 per acre) among pre-existing deep-rooted, nitrogen-fixing tree or shrub species (400 per hectare) such as mesquite and acacia, or alongside transplanted tree saplings. For reforestation and biodiversity in the agave/mesquite agroforestry system, the Via Organica research farm in San Miguel has developed acodos or air-layered clones of mesquite trees. These mesquite acodos are essentially mesquite branches from mature trees transformed into saplings planted into the ground, which, after six months to a year of being watered and cared for in the greenhouse, can grow up to two meters tall.

Agaves (especially salmiana, americana, mapisaga, and crassipina) naturally produce large amounts of plant leaf or pencas every year, which can then be chopped up and fermented, turned into silage.  Agave’s perennial silage production far exceeds most other forage production (most of which require irrigation and expensive chemical inputs) with three different varieties (salmiana, americana, and mapisaga) in various locations producing approximately 40 tons per acre or 100 tons per hectare, of fermented silage, annually. The variety crassispina, valuable for its high-sugar piña content for mescal, produces slightly less than 50% of the penca biomass than the other three varieties (average 46.6 tons per year).

The fermented agave silage of the three most productive varieties has a considerable market value of $100 US per ton (up to $4,000 US per acre or $10,000 per hectare gross income). This system, in combination with rotational grazing, has the capacity to feed up to 40 sheep, lambs or goats per acre/per year or 100 per hectare, producing a potential value added net income of $3,000 US per acre or $7,500 per hectare. Once certified as organic, sheep and lamb production will substantially increase profitability per acre/hectare, especially if organic viscera (heart, liver, kidneys etc.) are processed into freeze-dried nutritional supplements.

In addition, the agave heart or piña, with a market value of $150 US per ton, harvested at the end of the agave plant’s 8-13 year-lifespan for mescal (a valuable distilled liquor) or inulin (a valuable nutritional supplement), or silage, can weigh 300-400 kg. (660-880 pounds), in the three most productive varieties. Again the crassispiña variety has a much smaller piña (160 tons per 2000 plants). The value of the piña from 2000 agave plants for the salmiana, americana, and mapisaga varieties, harvested once, at the end of the plant’s productive lifespan (approximately 10 years) has a market value of $52,500 (over 10 years, with 10% harvested annually) US per hectare, with the market value for inulin being considerably more.

Combining the market value of the penca and piña of the three most productive varieties we arrive at a total gross market value of $152,500 US per hectare and $61,538 per acre, over 10 years. Adding the value of the 72,000 hijuelos or shoots of 2000 agave plants (each producing an average of 36 shoots or clones) with a value of 12 pesos or 60 cents US per shoot we get an additional $43,200 gross income over 10 years. Total estimated gross income per hectare for pencas ($100,000), piñas ($52,500), and hijuelos ($43,200) over 10 years will be $195,700, with expenses to establish and maintain the system projected to be to be $15,000 (including fencing) per hectare over 10 years. As these numbers, even though approximate, indicate, this system has tremendous economic potential.

 

Pioneered by sheep and goat ranchers, Hacienda Zamarippa, in the municipality of San Luis de la Paz, Mexico and then expanded and modified by organic farmers and researchers in San Miguel de Allende and other locations, “The Billion Agave Project” as the new Movement calls itself, is starting to attract regional and even international attention on the part of farmers, government officials, climate activists, and impact investors. One of the most exciting aspects of this new agroforestry system is its potential to be eventually established or replicated, not only across Mexico, but in a significant percentage of the world’s arid and semi-arid drylands, (including major areas in Central America, Latin America, the Southwestern US, Asia, Oceana, and Africa). Arid and semi-arid drylands constitute, according to the United Nations Convention to Prevent Desertification, 40% of the Earth’s lands.

Alleviating Rural Poverty

Besides improving soils, regenerating ecosystems, and sequestering carbon, the economic impact of this agroforestry system appears to be a long-overdue game-changer in terms of reducing and eliminating rural poverty. Currently 90% of Mexico’s dryland farmers (86% of whom do not have wells or irrigation) are unable to generate any profit whatsoever from farm production, according to government statistics. The average rural household income in Mexico is approximately $5,000-6,000 US per year, derived overwhelmingly from off-farm employment and remittances or money sent home from Mexican immigrants working in the US or Canada. Almost 50% of Mexicans, according to government statistics, are living in poverty or extreme poverty.

The chart below compares the high productivity of agave (in terms of animal forage or silage production) compared to other forage crops, all of which, unlike agave and mesquite, require expensive and/or unavailable irrigation or crop inputs. The second chart compares the productivity, in terms of penca or leaf biomass, from the species salmiana. See appendix for comparisons of other agave species in a number of different locations.

Deploying the Agave-Based Agroforestry System

The first step in deploying this agave-powered agroforestry and holistic livestock management system involves carrying out basic ecosystem restoration practices. Restoration is necessary given that most dryland areas suffer from degraded soils, erosion, low fertility, and low rainfall retention in soils. Initial ecosystem restoration typically requires putting up fencing or repairing fencing for livestock control, constructing rock barriers (check dams) for erosion control, building up contoured rows and terracing, subsoiling (to break up hardpan soils), transplanting agaves of different varieties and ages (1600-2500 per hectare or 650-1000 per acre), sowing pasture grasses, as well as transplanting (if not previously forested) mesquite or other nitrogen-fixing trees (400 per hectare or 135 per acre) or shrubs. Depending on the management plan, not all agaves will be planted in the same year, but ideally the system contains an equal division of 200 plants per year of each age (planted in ages 1-10) so as to stagger harvest times for the agave piñas, which are harvested at the end of the particular species 8-13 year lifespan.

Planting in turn is followed by no-till soil management (after initial subsoiling) and sowing pasture grasses and cover crops of legumes, meanwhile temporarily “resting” pasture (i.e. keeping animals out of overgrazed pastures or rangelands) long enough to allow regeneration of forage and survival of young agaves and tree seedlings. Following these initial steps of ecosystem restoration and planting agaves and establishing sufficient tree cover, which can take up to five years, the next step is carefully implementing planned rotational grazing of sheep and goats (or other livestock) across these pasturelands and rangelands, at least during the rainy season (4-6 months per year), utilizing moveable solar fencing and/or shepherds and shepherd dogs (neither overgrazing nor under-grazing); supplementing pasture forage, especially during the six-eight-month dry season, with fermented agave silage. During the dry season many families will choose to keep the breeding stock on their smaller family parcels or paddocks, feeding them fermented silage (either agave or agave/mesquite pod mix) to keep them healthy throughout the dry season, when pasture grasses are severely limited.

By implementing these restoration and agroforestry practices, farmers and ranchers can begin to regenerate dryland landscapes and improve the health and productivity of their livestock, provide affordable food for their families, improve their livelihoods, and at the same time, deliver valuable ecosystem services, reducing soil erosion, recharging water tables, and sequestering and storing large amounts of atmospheric carbon in plant biomass and soils, both aboveground and below ground.

Fermenting the Agave Leaves: A Revolutionary Innovation

The revolutionary innovation of a pioneering group of Guanajuato farmers has been to turn a heretofore indigestible, but massive and accessible source of fiber and biomass, the agave leaves or pencas, into a valuable animal feed, utilizing the natural process of anaerobic fermentation to transform the plants’ indigestible saponin and lectin compounds into digestible carbohydrates, sugar, and fiber. To do this, practitioners have developed a relatively simple machine, either stand alone or hooked up to a tractor, that can chop up the very tough pruned leaves of the agave. After chopping the agave’s leaves or pencas (into what looks like green coleslaw) producers then anaerobically ferment this wet silage (ideally along with the chopped-up protein-rich pods of the mesquite tree, or other protein sources) in a closed container, such as a 5 or 50-gallon plastic container or cubeta with a lid, removing as much oxygen as possible (by tapping it down) before closing the lid.

The fermented end-product, golden-colored after 30 days, good for 30 moths, is a nutritious but very inexpensive silage or animal fodder, that costs approximately 1.5 Mexican pesos (or 7.5 cents US) per kilogram/2.2 pounds (fermented agave alone) or three pesos (agave and mesquite pods together) per kilogram to produce. In San Miguel de Allende, the containers we use, during this initial experimental stage of the project cost $3 US per unit for a 20 liter or 5 gallon plastic container or cubeta with a lid, with a lifespan of 25 uses or more before they must be recycled. Two hundred liter reusable containers cost $60 US per unit (new, $30 used) but will last considerable longer than the 20 liter containers.

As the attached business plan for fermented agave silage indicates, harvesting and processing the pencas alone will provide significant value and profits per hectare for landowners and rural communities (such as ejidos in Mexico) who deploy the agave/agroforestry system at scale. In addition, Billion Agave Project researchers are now developing silage storage alternatives that will eliminate the necessity for the relatively expensive 20 liter or 200 liter plastic cubetas or containers.

The agave silage production system can provide the cash-strapped rancher or farmer with an alternative to having to purchase alfalfa (expensive at 20 cents US per kg and water-intensive) or hay (likewise expensive) or corn stalks (labor intensive and nutritionally-deficient), especially during the dry season.

According to Dr. Juan Frias, one of the pioneers of this process, lambs or adult sheep readily convert 10 kilos of fermented agave silage into one kilo of body weight, half of which will be marketable as meat or viscera. At 1.5 to 2 pesos per kilo (7.5-15 cents per pound), this highly nutritious silage can eventually make the difference between poverty and a decent income for literally millions of the world’s dryland small farmers and herders.

Typically, an adult sheep will consume 2-2.5 kilograms of silage every day, while a lamb of up to five months of age will consume 500-800 grams per day.  (Cattle will consume 10 times as much silage per day as sheep, approximately 20-25 kg per day.) Under the agave system for sheep and goats it costs approximately 20 pesos or one dollar a pound (live weight) to produce what is worth, at ongoing market rates for non-organic mutton or goat, 40 pesos or two dollars per pound (live weight). (Certified organic lamb, mutton, or goat will bring in 25-50 percent more). In ongoing experiments in San Miguel de Allende, pigs and chickens have remained healthy and productive with fermented agave forage providing 15% of their diet, reducing feed costs considerably.

The bountiful harvest of this regenerative, high-biomass, high carbon-sequestering system includes not only extremely low-cost, nutritious animal forage (up to 100 tons or more per hectare per year of fermented silage, starting in years three-five, averaged out over ten years), but also high-quality organic lamb, mutton, cheese, milk, aquamiel (agave sap), pulque (a mildly alcoholic beverage), inulin (a nutritional supplement), and distilled agave liquor (mescal), all produced organically with no synthetic chemicals or pesticides whatsoever, at affordable prices, with excess agave biomass fiber, and bagasse available for textiles, compost, biochar, construction materials, and bioethanol.

Regenerative Economics: The Bottom Line

In order to motivate a critical mass of impoverished farmers and ranchers struggling to make a living in the degraded drylands of Mexico, or in any of the arid and semi-arid areas in the world, to adopt this system, it is necessary to have a strong economic incentive.  There absolutely must be economic rewards, both short-term and long-term, in terms of farm income, if we expect rapid adoption of this system. Fortunately, the agave/mesquite agroforestry system provides this, starting in year three and steadily increasing each year thereafter, producing significant amounts of low-cost silage to feed livestock and a steady and growing revenue stream from selling surplus pencas, piñas, and silage from individual farm or communal lands (ejidos).

Given that most dryland farmers have little or no operating capital, there needs to be a system to provide financing (loans, grants, ecosystem credits) and technical assistance to deploy this regenerative system and maintain it over the crucial 5-10 year initiation period. Based upon a decade of implementation and experimentation, we estimate that this agave agroforestry system will cost approximately $1500 US dollars per year, per hectare to establish and maintain, averaged out over a ten-year period. See chart below. By year five, however this system should be able to pay out initial operating loans (upfront costs in years one or one through five are much higher than in successive years) and begin to generate a net profit.

The overwhelming majority of Mexican dryland farmers, as noted previously, have no wells for irrigation (86%) and make little no money (90%) from their subsistence agriculture practices (raising corn, beans, and squash and livestock). Although the majority of rural smallholders are low-income or impoverished, they do however typically own their own (family or self-built) houses and farm sheds or buildings as well as title or ownership to their own parcels of land, typically five hectares (12 acres) or less, as well as their livestock. And beyond their individual parcels, three million Mexican families are also joint owners of communal lands or ejidos, which constitute 56% of total national agricultural lands (103 million hectares or 254 million acres).  Ejidos arose out the widespread land reform and land redistribution policies following the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20. Large landholdings or haciendas were broken up and distributed to small farmers and rural village organizations, ejidos.

Unfortunately, most of the lands belonging to Mexico’s 28,000 communal landholding ejidos are arid or semi-arid with no wells or irrigation. But being an ejido member does give a family access and communal grazing (some cultivation) rights to the (typically overgrazed) ejido or village communally-owned land. Some ejidos including those in the drylands are quite large, encompassing 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) or more. In contrast to farmers in the US or the rest of the world, most of these Mexican dryland or ejido farmers have little or no debt. For many, their bank account is their livestock, which they sell as necessary to pay for out of the ordinary household and personal expenses.

As noted earlier, most Mexican farmers today subsist on the income from off-farm jobs by family members, and remittances sent home from family members working in the US or Canada. They understand first hand that climate change and degraded soils are making it nearly impossible for them to grow their traditional milpas (raising corn, beans, and squash during the rainy season) or raise healthy livestock for family consumption and sales. Most are aware that their livestock often cost them as much labor and money to raise (or more) than their value for family subsistence or their value in the marketplace.

Mexico has a total of 2400 municipios or counties located in 32 states. Across Mexico small farmers are already cultivating agave or harvesting wild agave in 1000 municipios and nine states, harvesting piñas for mescal or pulque production. Only a few these areas, however, Hacienda Zamarippa in San Luis de la Paz, Via Organica (and surrounding ejidos), a 5,000 hectare organic beef ranch called Canada de la Virgen in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, and pulque producers in Coahuila and Tlaxcala are currently harvesting pencas or agave leaf to produce fermented silage for livestock. However, as the word spreads about the incredible value of pencas and the agave/mesquite agroforestry developing in the state of Guanajuato, farmers in most of the nation’s ejidos and municipios will be interested in deploying this system in their areas.

With start-up financing, operating capital, and technical assistance (much of which can be farmer-to-farmer training), a critical mass of Mexican smallholders should be able to benefit enormously from establishing this agave-based agroforestry and livestock management system on their private parcels, and benefit even more by collectively deploying this system with their other ejido members on communal lands. With the ability to generate a net income up to $6-12,000 US per year/per hectare of fermented agave silage (and lamb/sheep/livestock production) on their lands, low maintenance costs after initial deployment, and with production steadily increasing three to five years after implementation, this agave system has the potential to spread all across Mexico (and all the arid and semi-arid drylands of the world.)  As tens of thousands and eventually hundreds of thousands of small farmers and farm families start to become self-sufficient in providing up 100% of the feed and nutrition for their livestock, dryland farmers will have the opportunity to move out of poverty and regenerate household and rural community economies, restoring land fertility and essential ecosystem services at the same time.

The extraordinary characteristic of this agave agroforestry system is that it generates almost immediate rewards. Starting from seedlings or agave shoots, (hijuelos they are called) in year three in the 8-13-year life-span of these agaves, farmers can begin to prune and harvest the lower plant leaves or pencas from these agaves (pruning approximately 20% of leaf biomass every year starting in year three) and start to produce tons of nutritious fermented animal feed/silage. Individual agave leaves or pencas from a mature plant can weigh more than 20 kilos or 45 pounds each. In the areas where wild agaves are growing, (often at fairly low-density of 100-400 agaves per hectare) land managers can detach the shoots from the mother plant and transplant hijuelos, so as to achieve higher (and eventually maximum) density of agaves in the large amount of the nation’s lands where agave are growing wild.

Because the system requires no inputs or chemicals, the meat, milk, or forage produced can readily be certified organic, likely increasing its wholesale value in the marketplace. In addition, the piñas or plant stem from 2000 agave plants (one hectare) with an average piña per plant of 300-400 kg (3 pesos or 15 cents US per KG) can generate a one-time revenue of $52,500 US dollars) at the final harvest of the agave plant, when all remaining leaves and stem are harvested. But even as agaves are completely harvested at the end of their 8-13-year life span, other agave seedlings or hijuelos (shoots) of various ages which have steadily been planted alongside side them will maintain the same level of biomass and silage production. In a hectare of 2,000 agave plants, approximately 72,000 hijuelos or new baby plants (averaging 36 per mother plant) will be produced over a ten-year period. These 72,000 baby plants (ready for transplanting) have a current market value over a ten-year period of 12 Mexico pesos (60 cents US) each or $43,200 US ($4,320 US per year).

Financing the Agave-Based Agroforestry System

Although Mexico’s dryland small-holders are typically debt-free, they are cash poor. To establish and maintain this system, as the chart above indicates, they will need approximately $1500 US dollars a year per hectare ($370 per acre) for a total cost over 10 years at $15,000.  Starting in year five, each hectare should be generating $10,000 or more worth of fermented silage or foraje per year.

By year five, farmers deploying the system will be generating enough income from silage production and livestock sales to pay off the entire 10-year loan. From this point on they will become economically self-sufficient, and, in fact, will have the opportunity to become moderately prosperous. Pressure to overgraze communal lands will decrease, as will the pressure on rural people to migrate to cities or to the US and Canada. Meanwhile massive amounts of atmospheric carbon will have begun to be sequestered above ground and below ground, enabling many of Mexico’s 2400 counties (municipalidades) to eventually reach net zero carbon emissions. In addition, other ecosystem services will improve, including reduced topsoil erosion, more rainfall/water retention in soils, more soil organic matter, increased tree and shrub cover, increased biodiversity (above ground and below ground), restoration of grazing areas, and increased soil fertility.

Natural Carbon Sequestration in Regenerated Soils and Plants

Mexico, like every nation, has an obligation, under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) through converting to renewable forms of energy (especially solar and wind) and energy conservation, at the same time, drawing down excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing, through the process of enhanced forest and plant photosynthesis, this “drawdown” carbon in its biomass, roots, and soil. Agave-based agroforestry (2000 agave plants and 400 mesquite acodos per hectare) as a perennial system, over 10-15 years can store aboveground and below ground approximately 143 metric tons of carbon dioxide per hectare (58 tons of CO2 per acre) on a continuous basis. In terms of this above ground (and below ground) carbon/carbon dioxide sequestration capacity over 10-15 years (143 tons of CO2e), this system, maintained as a polyculture with continuous perennial growth, is among the most soil regenerative on earth, especially considering the fact that it can be deployed in harsh arid and semi-arid climates, on degraded land, basically overgrazed and unsuitable for growing crops, with no irrigation or chemical inputs required whatsoever. In Mexico, where 60% of all farmlands or rangelands are arid or semi-arid, this system has the capacity to sequester 100% of the nation’s current Greenhouse Gas emissions (590 million tons of CO2e) for one year if deployed on approximately 2% or 4.125 million hectares (2000 agaves and 400 mesquites) of the nation’s total lands (197 million hectares). If deployed on 41.25 million hectares, it will cancel out all of Mexico’s GHGs over the next decade. Communally-owned ejido lands in Mexico alone account for more than 100 million hectares. The largest eco-system restoration project in recent until now has been the decade-long restoration of the Loess Plateau (1.5 million hectares) in north-central China in the 1990s.

In a municipalidad or county like San Miguel de Allende, Mexico covering 1,537 Km2 (153,700 hectares) with estimated annual Greenhouse Gas emissions of 654,360 t/CO2/yr (178,300 t/C/yr) the agave/mesquite agroforestry system (sequestering 143 tons of CO2e above ground per hectare after 10 years) would need to be deployed on approximately 4,573 hectares or 3% of the total land in order to cancel out all current emissions for one year. If deployed on 45 thousand hectares it will cancel out all FHG emissions over the next decade. There are 2400 municipalidades or counties in Mexico, including 1000 that are already growing agave and harvesting the piñas for mescal.

In the watershed of Tambula Picachos in the municipality of San Miguel there are 39,022 hectares of rural land (mainly ejido land) in need of restoration (93.4% show signs of erosion, 53% with compacted soil). Deploying the agave/mesquite agroforestry on most of this degraded land 36,150 hectares (93%) would be enough to cancel out all current annual emissions in the municipality of San Miguel for one year.

The gross economic value of growing agave on this 4,573 hectares (including silage, piñas, and hijuelos) averaged out over 10 years would amount to at least $89 million dollars US per year, a tremendous boost to the economy. In comparison, San Miguel de Allende, one of the top tourist destinations in Mexico (with 1.3 visitors annually) brings in one billion dollars a year from tourism, it’s number one revenue generator.

APPENDIX

 

 

Record Temperatures in the Global South: The Effect of Change of Land Use and Deforestation Becomes More and More Patent Through the Changes of Temperature

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The case for Regeneration: It has never been more urgent

We have reached a point in time where more and more people are feeling the effects of climate change in their everyday lives. The loss of biodiversity is becoming more evident, we are witnessing more floods and droughts, the world is becoming hotter and fires are more frequent and devastating.

The time for change is now, and it will take all of our global efforts to embrace frameworks that lead us to being better managers of our environments as well as help us pick on best practices, mobilize and address the root causes of the problems we are facing.

This year for our newsletter we want to start sharing with you dispatches from the field: updates on what is happening globally and messages of hope and resilience that could turn the tide.

Australia Update
Andre Leu, International Director of Regeneration International

Why is it so Important to Dramatically Reduce the Current Rate of CO2 Emissions?

If emissions are not reduced soon, all of us will be badly affected by catastrophic climate change. This is because it will take centuries to get the heat out of our oceans. Ocean heat is a significant driver of our weather. The oceans and the atmosphere are more than 1 degree Celsius warmer than the industrial revolution.

The energy needed to heat the atmosphere and the ocean by 1degree is equivalent to billions of atomic bombs. I am using this violent metaphor so that people can understand how much energy is being released into our atmosphere and oceans and why we will get more extreme weather events wreaking havoc on our communities and environment.

This extra energy is already violently fueling and disrupting our weather systems. It is causing weather events to be far more intense. Winter storms are becoming colder and can be pushed further south and north than normal due to this energy, bringing damaging snowstorms and intense floods. Similarly, summer storms, especially hurricanes, tornadoes, tropical lows etc. are far more intense with deluging destructive rainfall and floods. Droughts and heat waves are more common and are 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 the next fires.

The frequency and intensity of these types of events will only get exponentially worse when the world warms to 2 degrees Celsius which is the upper limit of the Paris climate agreement. We are on track to shoot far past this goal.

 Managing climate change is a major issue that we have to deal with now.

Atmospheric CO2 levels have been increasing at 2 parts per million (ppm) per year. Despite the global economic shut down as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic CO2 levels still set a new record of 420ppm in April 2021. This is a massive increase in emissions per year since the Paris Agreement and shows the reality is that most countries are not even close to meeting their Paris reduction commitments and many must be cheating on or ignoring their obligations.

The United Nations Paris Agreement proposes net CO2 neutrality by 2050. The evidence shows this will too late to the stop the enormous damage of catastrophic climate change. At the current rate of emissions there would be close to 500 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The fact is we are in a serious climate emergency now. We must speed up the transition to renewable energy, stop the clearing of all forests and we have to make a great effort to drawdown CO2 in the atmosphere to the pre industrial level of 280 ppm. 

Why Regenerative Agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture is based on a range of food and farming systems that use the photosynthesis of plants to capture CO2 and store it in the soil as soil organic matter. The soil holds almost three times the amount of carbon than the atmosphere and biomass (forests and plants) combined.

There are numerous regenerative farming systems that can sequester CO2 from the atmosphere through the photosynthesis and turn this into soil organic matter through the actions of the roots and soil biology – the soil microbiome.

According to the Australia Climate Council the cost of extreme weather events in Australia has nearly doubled since the 1970s. Their report shows that the impact of fires, floods, droughts, storms and sea level rise linked to climate change could cost Australia a $100 billion every year by 2038.

The Soilkee System 

Niels Olsen with a multispecies cover crop of legumes, grasses, and grains for livestock. This mix grows strongly in mid-winter. Cereals, pulses, and other cash crops can be planted into the pasture to produce high-value cash crops.

An innovative example of regenerative agriculture in Australia is the development of the Soilkee, which was designed by Neils Olsen.
First the ground cover/pasture is grazed or mulched to reduce root and light competition. Then the Soilkee breaks up root mass, lifts and aerates the soil, top-dresses the ground cover/pasture in narrow strips, and plants seeds, all with minimal soil disturbance. The seeds of the cover/cash crops are planted and simultaneously fed an organic nutrient such as guano. The faster the seed germinates and grows, the greater the yield. It is critical to get the biology and nutrition to the seed at germination and to remove root competition.

Pasture cropping is excellent at increasing soil organic matter/soil carbon. Neils Olsen has been paid for sequestering 11 tonnes of CO2 per hectare (11,000 pounds/acre) per year, under the Australian government’s Carbon Farming Scheme in 2019. In 2020, he was paid for 13 tonnes of CO2 per hectare (13,000 pounds/acre) per year. He is the first farmer in the world to be paid for sequestering soil carbon under a government regulated system.

Regenerative agricultural systems such as cover cropping and pasture cropping are radically changing the conventional approach to weed management. They have shown that the belief that any plant that is not our cash crop is a weed and needs to be destroyed is no longer correct. The fact is that plant diversity builds resilience and increases yields, not the other way around. The key is developing management systems that change competition from other plants into mutualism and symbiosis that benefit the cash crop.

A perennial pasture a few days after the Soil Kee was used to break up the root mass and    plant the seeds of the cover crop.

Multispecies cover crops produce more biomass and nutrients than single-species monocultures. In the example of the Soilkee system, the amount of stock feed is more than double the usual perennial or annual pastures in the district.

Variations of these systems are being developed all the time and are being used very successfully in horticulture, grazing and broadacre agriculture.

It is time to get on with drawing down the excess CO2 by scaling up existing regenerative agriculture practices, especially organic systems. This is very doable and achievable. It would require minimal financial costs to fund existing institutions, training organizations and relevant NGOs to run courses and workshops. Most importantly this then needs to be scaled up through proven farmer to farmer training systems. The evidence shows that these types of peer to peer systems are the most effective way to increase adoption of best practices.

The widespread adoption of best practice regenerative agriculture systems should be the highest priority for farmers, ranchers, governments, international organizations, elected representatives, industry, training organizations, educational institutions and climate change organizations. We owe this to future generations and to all the rich biodiversity on our precious living planet.

From Argentina
Ercilia Sahores, Latin American Coordinator

Extreme heat waves that set record temperatures, persistent power outages, water scarcity. Almost half of the twenty-three provinces of the country under fire…It’s not the apocalypse, it is Argentina early 2022.

Not even one month has passed since the beginning of the new year and the provinces of Chubut, Río Negro, Neuquén, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, Buenos Aires, Tierra del Fuego, Formosa, Misiones and Corrientes are already suffering severe forest fires. But what happens this year is not an isolated episode: in 2021, over two million hectares were burned in the country.

The situation is so bad that the government has finally issued a presidential decree declaring an igneous emergency for the period of one year to promote coordination between the different areas in charge of fire prevention.

However, the underlying reasons for having reached an igneous emergency  go way beyond lack of coordination: extreme deforestation, change of land use, industrial agriculture, real estate projects, mining, lack of resources for prevention, lack of political will. These ingredients combined make up for an “extremely combustive” cocktail.

Forest fires, as we know, are not exclusive of Argentina. And the reality is that in the past 5 years, all over the world, we are experiencing cases of megafires. Megafires have been defined as those fires covering more than 100,000 acres (40,000 hectares or 400 square kilometers) They are very challenging to contain and are accelerated by high temperatures and drought. Australia, the Amazon, Congo Basin, California, Indonesia, are just a few examples of places where megafires have occurred in the past five years.

Photo credit: Unsplash

The Paradigmatic Case of the Paraná river in Argentina

With an extension of 4000 km (2485 miles), the Paraná is America’s second largest river after the Amazon and the eighth longest river in the world.

Running through Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, it forms a vast delta which covers about 15,000km2 , through which the Paraná drains towards the Atlantic Ocean 300km away. The Paraná is linked to the underground streams of the Guaraní water table which is one of the biggest freshwater reserves in the planet. According to the National University of Rosario and the University of the Litoral, the area is home to 700 species of plants and animals, making it one of the richest territories in biodiversity in South America.

Photo credit: Google

Visiting Parana is always a beautiful experience: the cities along it have beautiful costaneras or riverbanks where most of the social life takes place and the river is very important for trade and fishing. About 80% of the country’s crop exports use the river to its estuary in the Atlantic Ocean.

In 2020, the water levels fell drastically resulting in the lowest water volume since 1940.

It is a well-known fact that everything that happens upstream affects what happens downstream. Deforestation in Brazil’s amazon rainforest has hit its highest level in over 15 years. This deforestation affects directly the rain patterns that charge the Parana river. In addition to deforestation, another threat to the delta’s health has been the constant over dredging of the river to simplify the trade of minerals, GMO soy and corn and the increased number of cattle has also had a damaging effect on the river levels.

 To make things even worse and for the aforementioned reasons, the Parana region has also been experiencing wildfires for the past two years. The fires have spread across the interwoven islands, lagoons and streams that make up the Delta. The combination of the worst drought in 70 years, river runoff and fires has been deadly for the Parana region, its biodiversity and ecosystem. Once again, it is hard to hold one person or economic sector responsible: pressure from livestock farmers displaced by soy cultivation from the lowland Pampas, massive deforestation upstream, real estate development and industrial agriculture in general have all had a devastating effect on one of the central arteries of South America.

Join us in being part of the Solution

The need of a real solution to all of these intertwined issues has become more evident. Regeneration International’s Network has affiliates all over the world who are already working on concrete, on the ground solutions to all these problems. We invite you to join us and make your voice be heard. Through education, webinars, global on line conferences such as the People’s Food Summit we are working together to bring hope and action in these challenging times.

From Africa
Precious Phiri, African Coordinator

Introduction and Background

 The COVID19 pandemic, worsening climatic changes and poor global policies and commitments to mitigating the impacts has such a negative effect on those on the frontlines, and this is at a global level. The most affected are farming populations. Recently, we have witnessed a series of weather extremes in form of delayed rains, floods, and long dry spells that all lead to unending droughts. Farmers are dealing with extremely difficult landscape conditions, and to push for farming techniques that reject the integrity of diversity of life, is to set us up for perpetual poverty, hunger and starvation.

In the face of these challenges, business as usual will not be able to create resiliency at grassroots and global levels. It is a sad story that global actions to heal landscapes and stop deforestation are not being taken seriously.

In Africa alone, 13 million square km of savannah grasslands and rangelands facing a threat of ever advancing desertification which means there is a lot of water loss and the soil is degrading in health, sustaining life and in being a carbon storage. Native forests are under threat of extinction; e.g. Uganda has lost more than half of its native forests (12,1 mill hectares), 60% loss of mangroves in the Gulf of Guinea (Liberia to Angola).

The Real Cause of the Problem

 These challenges we see are not in themselves causes of the problems faced by farmers, they are symptoms that have their roots in land-use and management decisions made at all levels of life. The negative impact doesn’t only threaten biological ecosystems, it stretches to cultures and societies that are destabilized and their economic stability worsens as time progresses.

Small holder farmer groups are the most important as they nourish over 70% of the continents’ population. Their stability, brings security to our communities. National policies are still stuck on the industrially inspired approaches to landscape healing and farming. I am rural born and native of Zimbabwe, I have never in my wildest and most lost states of mind ever imagined that rural farmers will be introduced to spraying herbicides! When I first encountered this news, I blurted out- “what happened to weeding”?!  These so called production technologies have not only threatened the biology and productivity of soil, they are slowly chipping away the culture of people celebrating working together to help everyone achieve a good harvest and the opportunity for farmers to learn and thrive from land they manage.

 Solutions, Action Stories and Hope

 We are desperately in need of scaling up and global recognition of farming practices that will progressively improve whole systems, based on regenerative principles, designed to be relevant to the uniqueness of each place.   There’s now, more than ever, a great awakening to begin a new normal in how we regenerate landscapes, grow food and how we run food supply systems. The importance of healthy and locally produced food is being highlighted through the continuous obstacles faced especially in these pandemic times. There is a continuous rising of citizens led research, stories and learning platforms to farm for a future that is resilient, through usage of agro-ecological approaches, Holistic management and its decision making process, natural farming and policy and market influence through networks that have committed their resources to magnify citizens’ voices.

 There is hundreds of thousands of farmers in pursuit of healthy soils and healthy food systems through some partner networks on the African continent. These networks and individuals continue to celebrate and promote agro-ecological farming-with a strong emphasis on creating resiliency through soil health.

We work with all these partners, who are pioneering farmer led learning experiences as well as research, to keep inspiring change. Through the platform of The Peoples’ Food Summit in October 2021, we are building on the momentum to keep creating opportunities to learn, celebrate and rescue the culture of food, farming and landscape management in the world!

Here’s to a fruitful 2022, full of hope and intentionality on how we continue to forge ahead. There’s no backing down now, we know what is possible!

What Happened at the UNFCCC COP26 and How RI Could Promote Soil Health and Regenerative Agriculture to Reverse Climate Change at COP27 in Egypt

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GLASGOW: In November of last year, Regeneration International sent a delegation to Glasgow, Scotland, to attend the 26th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Nearly 200 countries negotiate emissions reductions and climate change mitigation goals to limit global temperature rise by 1,5C.

Days before attending, the 4 Per 1000 Initiative online platform notified its partners that Soil Heroes, a small foundation based in the Netherlands were calling all carbon farming advocates to sign an open letter addressed to Alok Sharma the CEO of the UNFCCC COP26 to recognize soil health as a major solution to climate mitigation – an initiative we decided to support and share with the world.

While the letter received many positive feedbacks and support from prominent organizations and activists in the food and agriculture space, we didn’t hear from the very people to whom it was addressed (COP26 President and CEO). However, it is important to understand that countries are required to set themselves Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) which are non-binding national plans highlighting climate action, climate-related targets for greenhouse gas reductions, policies and measures governments aim to implement in response to climate change and contribute to achieving the global targets set out in the Paris Agreement. 

The great news is that to this day 28 countries have chosen to highlight soil organic carbon into their NDCs. Though this shows the momentum soil health is gaining, we urgently need more countries to follow this course.

Therefore, we are actively working to make an updated open letter addressed to world COP27 in Egypt next year. Here we will shine a light on the NDCs of countries towards soil health, calling on other world leaders to follow them, and pressing parties to lobby for investments towards scaling up regenerative agricultural practices worldwide.

The outcomes from COP26 on agriculture and food: 

According to UN Climate Change News « Significant progress has been made at COP26 in both reducing the impact of climate change on the agriculture sector and lowering the sector’s contribution to global warming. »

Governments found agreement on three of the six topics included in the ‘Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture’ (KJWA). This process was scheduled to finish at COP26, but as the sessions wrapped up at the end of the conference, the text remained heavily bracketed, indicating many areas of disagreement. Governments agreed on the need to continue working on Agriculture under the UNFCCC process with a view to adopting a decision at COP27 in Egypt in 2022… 

Governments acknowledged that soil and nutrient management practices and the optimal use of nutrients lie at the core of climate-resilient, sustainable food production systems and can contribute to global food security.

The World Bank will commit to spending $25 billion in climate finance annually to 2025 through its Climate Action Plan, including a focus on agriculture and food systems. 

Global Methane Pledge: an US and EU-led initiative involving more than 100 countries responsible for about 50% of global methane emissions, committing to reduce their methane emissions by 30%from 2020 levels by 2030. 

Policy Action Agenda for a Just Transition to Sustainable Food and Agriculture: an effort led by the COP26 Presidency, the World Bank and Just Rural Transition. Supported by 16 countries representing 11% of global emissions from agriculture. Some of the proposed actions include repurposing subsidies that incentivize harmful agricultural practices, investment in R&D for agricultural innovation, and designing inclusive processed for consulting and communication with stakeholders.  

45 governments pledged urgent action and investment to protect nature and shift to more sustainable ways of farming. All continents were represented, with countries including India, Colombia, Vietnam, Germany, Ghana, and Australia. Examples of national commitments include:

  • Germany’s plans to lower emissions from land use by 25m tons by 2030
  • The UK’s aim to engage 75% of farmers in low carbon practices by 2030
  • Australia’s net-zero strategy which includes improved management of ¼ of its cropland and reducing emissions from agriculture by 36% from 2005 levels by 2030, through “storing carbon in vegetation and soils” and “voluntary land-based offsets”

However….

Still no reference to “regenerative agriculture” or any other close term. One of the major sticking points in the Koronivia work was the proposed inclusion of a reference to “agroecology”. The Africa group, the Least-Developed Countries and the EU were “strong champions” in pushing for the text to mention agroecology. The US and India were among the countries opposed to its inclusion. The term remains in still unresolved brackets, which will be discussed again at COP27… 

The funding commitments were still very much focused on halting deforestation.

All of the announcements rely on voluntary commitments, with no enforcement mechanisms. 

Some say that the Global Methane Pledge focuses too much on reducing emissions from fossil fuels and not enough on livestock and other agricultural emissions. Fossil fuel supply chains account for 35% of human-driven methane emissions while 40% are coming from agriculture. 

AIM4C has been criticized for its over-reliance on technology like genetically modified crops, climate-smart agriculture, and R&D, rather than sustainable farming methods such as regenerative agriculture. 

Marrakesh Partnership and the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA)
How regenerative movement organizations accredited to the UNFCCC have their say at the next COP27 negotiations.

Writing an open letter to world leaders such as the one by Soil Heroes we promoted is a good step for the regenerative movement. But, as a civil society representing grassroots realities, how can we make our voices heard to the very people involved in climate negotiations and working to implement NDCs? 

  1. Through the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture, the UNFCCC takes into account submissions from parties and observers (such as RI) to recommend and advocate key strategies for stakeholders to reach the Paris Agreement targets through agriculture. 

Consequently, regenerative movement organizations accredited to the UNFCCC should be mobilized to share a large number of statements to the KJWA ahead of COP27 to incentivize on the cores of action and of our partners, allies, and countries already engaged towards regenerative transitions in agriculture. 

 Note: countries such as Bhutan whose national food and nutrition security strategy is improving agricultural practices, switching from synthetic to organic fertilizers, and increasing biomass through greater perennial crop and fodder production. 

  1. The Land-use group of the UNFCCC Marrakesh partnership is open to all non-state actors (NGOs, cities, businesses, scientists, farmer organizations…) engaged on land-based climate action towards achieving the Paris Agreements. KWJA statements and recommendations can be discussed within this group, and we encourage all of our networks that are heading to COP27 in Egypt in November of this year to join the Marrakesh Partnership and contribute. 

 Please read our joint declaration with the Marrakesh Partnership released on 11.11.21 

 In 2022, RI’s participation at the UNFCCC COP27 will be significant with a renewed collaboration between Soil Heroes and our network of partners to highlight soil health, regenerative agriculture, and tangible actions made by parties through side events, online media, and collaborative contribution to both Marrakesh Partnership and KJWA platforms.

 Article written jointly with Soil Heroes.
Oliver Gardiner is Regeneration International’s Eurasia representative and creative media director.

Funding the Regeneration Revolution

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As we have repeatedly emphasized over the past decade, we cannot hope to solve the climate, human, environmental, immigration, financial, and rural economic crisis without organic and regenerative food, farming, and land use becoming the norm (along with alternative energy, conservation, and natural health practices), rather than just the alternative.

According to numerous polls and focus groups, the majority of Americans already understand that organic farming and (nutrient-dense, fresh, home-cooked, organic) food is better for your health. A growing number also understand that organic and regenerative farming, animal husbandry, and land use are healthier and more humane for farm animals and better for the climate (reducing emissions, naturally sequestering excess atmospheric carbon) and the planet (reducing pollution, preserving and regenerating biodiversity).

The unavoidable problem is that the majority of people are economically stressed and time-constrained, and/or lacking in cooking skills. Consumers routinely “cut corners” by purchasing cheaper, highly-processed, non-organic food or by eating out (or ordering home delivery) in fast food chains, or conventional restaurants. Sixty percent of the diet of Americans is composed of highly-processed food, laced with excess sugar, bad fats (high in Omega-6, low in Omega-3), pesticides, synthetic ingredients, preservatives, GMOs, and toxic vegetable oils.

Exacerbating this crisis, governments take billions of dollars of our tax dollars every year and subsidize corporate agribusiness, Big Food, Big Box, and Silicon Valley corporations. Business as usual and corrupt politicians (from both parties) allow these same corporations to cause trillions of dollars in damage to our health and the environment and destabilize the climate, creating a situation where the “true costs of food” are concealed, making organic foods, grass-fed or pastured meat and dairy, and other regenerative products seem to be “expensive” or unaffordable to many or most middle-class, working class, and lower-income people.

Despite all obstacles, there are thousands and thousands of US farmers and ranchers, and millions more across the globe, who are already farming and ranching utilizing organic and regenerative practices. These agriculturalists already know how to grow healthy and nutrient- dense fruits, vegetables, herbs, and grains without pesticides, GMO seeds, and chemical fertilizers. They already know how to graze or pasture farm animals (neither overgrazing nor under grazing) and preserve biodiversity.

The problem is that the U.S. and most governments around the world are subsidizing agriculture that is factory farmed, chemical, GMO, and energy-intensive, routinely prioritizing agricultural commodities and exports, rather than promoting and subsidizing healthy organic food for local, regional, and national markets, while guaranteeing farmers, ranchers, and farmworkers a growing market and a fair price for their labor.

We don’t have the time or space here to go into a full description of degenerative food, farming, and land use practices, which I try to cover in my 2020 book, Grassroots Rising.  Without offering up a full roadmap to 2030 on how we can make regenerative, renewable, and organic food and products the norm rather than just the alternative, let’s focus on the heart of the problem: how do we get adequate money and financing in the hands of a critical mass of farmers, ranchers, land managers, and indigenous communities around the world to expand, duplicate, and scale up the pre-existing organic and regenerative practices that the world needs in order to survive and thrive?

Of course we must continue to educate consumers, farmers, and policy-makers regarding the obvious, life-or-death benefits of organic and regenerative food, farming, and land use. We need an army of conscious consumers to increase the market demand for organic and regenerative foods and products, especially those fresh foods and animal products produced locally or regionally. We need the majority of farmers (and future farmers) to learn about “shovel ready” regenerative practices from their neighbors and counterparts. We need foundations and philanthropists to donate more money. We need politicians to listen to consumers and rural communities, stop subsidizing degenerative practices, and implement comprehensive policy changes. But we must also acknowledge that most farmers, especially small farmers, are struggling just to survive, that U.S. and global politics appear to be stuck in gridlock, and that economic “bootstrapping” and market demand can only go so far. The notion of a government-funded energy, food, and farming “Green New Deal,” at least in the short-run, appears to be dead, and time is running out.

Paying Farmers and Rural Communities to Regenerate the Earth

Agriculture is the largest employer in the world with 570 million farms supporting 3.5 billion people in rural households and communities. In addition to workers on the farm, food chain workers in processing, distribution, and retail make up hundreds of millions of other jobs in the world, with over 20 million food chain workers in the US alone (17.5% of the total workforce.) This makes public and private investment policies relating to food, farming, and land use very important.

Unfortunately, thousands of laws and regulations are passed every year, in every country and locality, that basically prop-up conventional or degenerate (i.e. industrial, factory farm, export-oriented, GMO) food and farming, while there is very little legislation passed or resources geared toward promoting organic and regenerative practices.

In the private sector trillions of dollars have been, and continue to be, invested in financial assets in the fossil fuel and so-called “conventional” food and farming sector; including trillions from the savings and pension funds of many conscious consumers, who would no doubt prefer their savings to be invested in a different manner, if they knew how to do this. Unfortunately, only a tiny percentage of public or private investment is currently going toward organic, grass-fed, free-range, and other healthy foods produced by small and medium-sized farms and ranches for local and regional consumption.

OCA and our sister organizations, Regeneration International, Via Organica, and the Hudson Carbon Project are working on a new system for measuring, verifying, and certifying carbon credits (natural carbon sequestration, both above ground and below ground through natural plant photosynthesis), and ecosystem services (water, biodiversity, soil fertility, biodiversity, and ecosystem restoration) so as to eliminate the rampant greenwashing and profiteering that have characterized carbon credits, carbon-trading and so-called responsible investing, and Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria (ESG) in corporate behavior up until now.

Regenerators want to move the money or capital required for a Regeneration Revolution, not into the hands of carbon traders or brokers or corrupt government intermediaries, but rather into the hands of the farmers, ranchers, and land managers who can make this happen, especially the world’s 500 million small farmers and rural and indigenous communities. We want to force or coopt polluters to pay for their carbon footprint, and we want investors and fund managers to start moving their money (totaling $125 trillion dollars globally) from degenerative stocks, bonds, and derivatives to regenerative assets. We want corporations, governments, and investors not only to divest from destructive corporate and financial entities, but to reinvest in natural capital development, regenerative agriculture, and the preservation and regeneration of farmlands, rangelands, forests, and marine ecosystems.

We need to focus on the major roadblock to Regeneration: the nearly 100% of private capital invested in degeneration: “profit-at-any-cost” corporations and a range of speculative non-productive financial assets.  Most of the owners, renters, and workers on world’s 570 million farms and ranches, as well as the three billion rural residents and villagers and workers in the food chain are ready and willing to transform our food, farming, and land management systems (and improve their economic livelihoods at the same time), but they don’t have the money to do so. In the U.S. alone, as I’ve previously written, we need a trillion dollars over the next decade to get into the hands of farmers, ranchers, food hubs, and forest/land owners and managers in order to transform our food system.

One new innovative, potentially equitable, and even game-changing strategy for organizing communities to preserve their lands and eco-systems and redirecting capital on a significant scale into organic and regenerative farming and land use are called “natural assets” or “natural asset companies.” In a recent essay, eco-impact investor David Stead explains:

“Natural Asset Companies (NACs) are a potential game-changer on a global scale. NACs will be newly formed, sustainable enterprises that hold the rights to the productivity and health of natural assets like land or marine areas. They are a new asset class on the New York Stock Exchange enabling owners to convert nature’s value into financial capital, using that capital to re-invest in the natural assets to protect them or improve their sustainable use.”

“Natural assets” globally provide over 125 trillion dollars annually in ecosystem services. As the regeneration revolution moves forward, natural carbon sequestration and environmental regeneration will generate addition trillions in natural capital assets on the Earth’s 22 billion acres of farmlands, pasturelands, rangelands, forests, and marine ecosystems, drawing down more and more of the excess carbon in the atmosphere that is disrupting the climate, and moving this CO2 through natural photosynthesis to where it belongs, into our degraded soils and above ground forests and plant life.

Investors in natural asset companies do not own the land, nor do they hold a lien on the finances of those regenerators on the ground who incorporate themselves into NACs. They simply supply the capital to enable self-organized farmers, ranchers, rural and indigenous communities to preserve, improve, and regenerate their lands, sequestering carbon and regenerating soils, forests, and ecosystems. In exchange, these “natural capital investors” have shares in natural asset practices (quantified, verified, and certified) that can be saved or sold to others. If investors’ natural capital shares depreciate they will lose money. However, if regenerative practices have increased, the natural capital assets (more carbon sequestered, more groundwater preserved, more soil fertility, more biodiversity, more trees and above ground biomass), they can sell their shares and make a profit.

David Stead explains NACs further: “On public lands, natural asset owners are typically the local and national government entities, whereas on private lands the asset owners are likely to be farmers, ranchers, or forest owners. A NAC is primarily owned by the natural asset owner, investors, and other stakeholders. The owners grant the rights to the natural asset and ecosystem services of a particular area to the newly formed NAC.” Once shares in the NACS are purchased, funds go into preserving or regenerating the lands, “making the eco-alternative” natural assets (tradeable on the stock market) increase in value over time.

To read more go to: https://impactentrepreneur.com/natural-asset-companies-nacs/

For a sharp critique of what could go wrong with NACs, just as carbon credits and corporate ESG promises have degenerated into greenwashing and land-grabbing previously, see Whitney Webb’s essay.

We need to move beyond government inertia and corruption, corporate greenwashing, and climate profiteering, but we must also begin to attract and redirect millions, hundreds of millions, and eventually trillions of dollars from degenerative investments and capital holdings into regenerative practices.

In future articles we will elaborate on how OCA, Regeneration International, and Hudson Carbon Project are developing affordable, scientifically-based certification and verification standards for regenerative systems and natural assets such as the Billion Agave/Mesquite agroforestry system in Mexico and the reforestation/holistic grazing/agro ecological practices of our affiliates all over the world. We need a global system of certification and verification similar to (and hopefully superior to) organic certification.

We need your participation and support as we move forward in this world-changing campaign we call Regeneration International. We need to build a massive international alliance to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, to sequester billions of tons of excess atmospheric carbon in our soils and biota, to regenerate billions of acres of degraded ecosystems, to eliminate rural poverty, to reverse our deteriorating public health and to revitalize rural communities all over the globe. The hour is late, but we still have time to regenerate.

Ronnie Cummins is co-founder of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Regeneration International, and the author of “Grassroots Rising: A Call to Action on Food, Farming, Climate and a Green New Deal.” 

Regeneration 2022: Requiem or Revival?

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“Regenerative agriculture provides answers to the soil crisis, the food crisis, the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy.” – Vandana Shiva, Regeneration International Co-Founder.

In September 2014, at the massive Climate March in New York City, a small but determined band of organic food, farm, natural health, and climate activists marched in the streets and held a press conference at the Rodale Institute in Manhattan, where we announced the formation of a new global network: Regeneration International (RI).

The ambitious goal of Regeneration International is to “change the global conversation” on food, farming, and climate. Our strategy is to inspire and mobilize the global grassroots with the revolutionary message that the climate crisis can be solved, in fact, that global warming and its collateral damage to public health, the environment, biodiversity, and economic livelihoods, can actually be reversed through a global scaling up of organic and regenerative best practices in combination with a transition to renewable energy.

RI’s world-changing vision, then and now, is based upon the actual best practices (and potential for expansion) of organic and regenerative farmers, ranchers, land, forest, and marine stewards across the globe. The Regeneration Movement believes that a powerful combination of renewable energy and conservation, supercharged with a regenerative transformation of our food, farming, and land-use practices, is the best and actually the only way to solve our Climate Emergency.

Regenerating Politics

We believe that a global awakening and Grassroots Rising, based upon the principles and practices of regenerative food, farming, and land-use, has the awesome potential to inspire and provoke a multi-partisan, multinational, populist Movement—Democrat, Independent, and Republican; liberal, radical, conservative, and libertarian; rancher, farmer, and indigenous; urban and rural; consumer and farmer; North and South.

Once established, a new multi-partisan, transnational united front will have the power to “make the polluters pay” and stimulate a massive transfer (divestment) of government and private capital away from degenerative practices (unhealthy, highly-processed food, factory farms, GMO seeds, chemical and energy-intensive agriculture, soil and environmental degradation, and rampant deforestation) to regenerative practices instead.

Instead of destroying the Earth, undermining public health, and impoverishing rural communities with “business and politics as usual,” we must instead embark on a local-to-global transformation. We must identify best practices and free up the funds to scale these best practices up to critical mass.

A Regeneration Revolution will require us to revitalize and re-carbonize our soils and vegetation; rehydrate our deserts and semi-arid lands; rejuvenate our forests; nurture soil fertility; stop erosion; recharge our ground water and aquifers; restore our wildlife and pollinizer habitats; and preserve and restore our marine eco-systems.

This Great Regeneration, alongside a renewable energy revolution, will re-stabilize the climate by reducing greenhouse gas pollution and drawing down excess CO2 (currently 419 ppm) from the atmosphere, returning this excess carbon to where it belongs, in our soils and landscapes, utilizing the miraculous power of human stewardship, animal husbandry, and natural photosynthesis.

This regeneration of our lands and environment, in turn, will help us restore our natural immune systems and revitalize public health (both physical and mental), bring together our fractured body politic, restore rural economic livelihoods, create jobs, and reduce the economic pressures that bring about forced migration.

State of the Regeneration Movement

Seven years after the New York City Climate March, the Regeneration Movement has succeeded, to some extent, in changing the conversation surrounding food, farming, and climate, but we have utterly failed to build a multi-partisan, multi-national Movement strong enough to change public policy and private investment.  Atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping CO2 reached a disturbing 397 parts per million in 2014, when RI was founded, and have since climbed to an alarming 419 ppm.

Yes, it is true that regenerative agriculture is the most talked about new concept in food, farming and climate circles, but it is in danger of being watered down, dumbed down, and coopted by corporate agribusiness and carbon credit profiteers and greenwashers, as evidenced most recently at COP-26, the U.N. Global Climate Summit, in Glasgow.

Unfortunately, the “progressive”, urban-based climate action movement has apparently still not understood or fully embraced regenerative principles and practices. Climate change action leaders are still talking almost exclusively about eliminating fossil fuels in the time frame we have left to avoid catastrophe, with little mention of the Great Drawdown of regenerative farming and land-use that must accompany a renewable energy revolution if we are to restore climate stability.

The Death of a Regenerative Green New Deal

Media coverage of regenerative food and farming, both mainstream and alternative, has certainly increased since 2014, but serious public interest in Regeneration, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, has waned. Although sales of organic and local food, and cooking at home have certainly increased since the onset of COVID, the Green New Deal (GND) Resolution in Congress (with its positive advocacy of regenerative food and farming) is dead, at least for the moment.

The GND has now become not much more than a limited partisan program, supported by climate activists and a minority of Democrats in the Congress. Even worse, the World Economic Forum and advocates for a Great Reset have attempted to hijack GND language and concepts as part of their technocratic and authoritarian agenda.

Potential rural and farmer support for a regenerative GND evaporated after the Democratic Party Establishment shoved aside Bernie Sanders, the only Presidential candidate in 2020 with a grasp of how a GND with an emphasis on regenerative food and farming could revitalize family farms, public health, and create rural jobs and economic prosperity.

Unfortunately, Sanders, after being slandered and marginalized by the mass media and the Democratic Party Establishment joined ranks with the Biden administration on pandemic policies, offering no real alternative to the Democratic Party’s panic-mongering and profiteering, despite decades of Sanders attacking Big Pharma, Wall Street, and military madness.

Joe Biden destroyed his political credibility, just as the Trump administration did before him, by failing to “stop the panic” engendered by Big Pharma, the mass media, and hyper-partisan Democrats surrounding the pandemic. Democrats (and the Republicans before them) in the White House, basically failed to articulate the independent and nuanced science regarding the real, though relative virulence, of SARS-CoV-2. Both administrations ignored or down-played the lab origins of COVID-19, the global cover-up and the role of U.S. and Pentagon funding and scientific collaboration. Both Trump and Biden allowed Anthony Fauci and Big Pharma to set policy, and rejected (Biden) or downplayed (Trump) the independent scientists and doctors advocating prevention healthy food, Vitamin D supplementation, and natural or “herd” immunity (youth, those in good health, and those previously recovered from COVID-19). Both administrations basically stood by as Fauci, Bill Gates, media monopolies and Silicon Valley slandered and censored early treatment and/or prevention of COVID-19, www.FLCCC.net utilizing off-patent, inexpensive generic drugs such as Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, and nutrition supplements. Instead both Trump (who initially spoke out on hydroxychloroquine, but then went silent) and Biden regurgitated vaccine profiteer propaganda, claiming that “Warp Speed,” rushed-to-market, experimental vaccines would stop the pandemic.

Biden, like the Trump administration before him, allowed Big Pharma, Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, vaccine profiteers, Silicon Valley, and Pentagon contractors to call the shots, rather than listening to independent scientists, medical practitioners, and investigators regarding the origins, nature, virulence, prevention, and treatment of COVID-19, as well as the relative safety and efficacy of the experimental vaccines. Trump and Biden both flip-flopped back and forth on the obvious Wuhan lab origins and cover-up of COVID, seemingly more interested in maintaining “business as usual” in their relations with Big Pharma and China, rather than putting an end to the dangerous weaponizing of viruses and pathogens in unregulated and accident-prone labs, a mad science that continues unabated, not only in the U.S. and China, but across the world.

At the present time the majority of Americans seem to be more concerned about the latest (highly transmissible but relatively harmless) variant of SARS-CoV-2, the Omicron, than they are about the Climate Emergency, the virtual Civil War among the body politic, the shredding of the Constitution, or the fact that hundreds of millions of working class, rural, minority, and young people have been forced into poverty, psychological despair, or economic hardship by the collateral damage and bungled/authoritarian government responses to the pandemic.

However, this preoccupation or mass psychosis is likely to change over the next few months as the dominant, far less virulent Omicron variant spreads across the global and engenders large-scale natural (herd) immunity.

As the Biden Administration self-destructs because of its “business as usual” politics and its disastrous and authoritarian handling of the COVID crisis, the Republican Party is poised to take back control over Congress and the White House in 2022-24. Even though a GOP Congress will hopefully reverse the dictates of our bio-medical security state, especially as the pandemic winds down, we must keep in mind that most Republican politicians are still as routinely compromised by the fossil fuel industry, the Pentagon, Wall Street, Big Pharma, and corporate agribusiness as the Democrats.

Neither party seems to be able to “connect the dots” between the climate crisis, Big Ag’s toxic food, the decline of family farms and rural communities, deforestation, a polluted environment, deteriorating public health, a chronic disease epidemic, and our continuing vulnerability to engineered pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2.

Unfortunately, climate activists such as the Sunrise Movement in the U.S. or Extinction Rebellion in the E.U., and individual leaders such as Greta Thunberg or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have utterly failed to integrate regenerative food, farming, and land use into their core messaging about solving the climate crisis. As a result, the climate movement largely failed to gain rural and bi-partisan (i.e. both Republican and Democratic voter) support for a Green New Deal in the crucial period of 2018-2020, when polls showed massive public support for a GND that could both fix the climate and rejuvenate the economy, both rural and urban. In addition, none of the leading candidates for President in 2020, except for Bernie Sanders really pushed the GND, much less the regenerative component of the Green New Deal in their outreach to farmers, rural communities, and health, organic, and climate conscious consumers.

Although Regeneration proponents including RI were able to successfully lobby the Sunrise Movement into including wording on regenerative farming and land use in the Green New Deal Resolution in 2019, supported by over 100 Democrats in the Congress, climate action leaders never gave regenerative agriculture the emphasis and focus it needed. Thus the bi-partisan coalition that RI organized, called Farmers and Ranchers for a Green New Deal, never achieved its goal of uniting rural farmers, urban consumers, students, and climate-motivated voters into a powerful united front.

Next Steps

Although there have been setbacks, especially on the political front, for the Regeneration Movement, we intend to push forward. In 2022 and beyond OCA, RI, and our allies will continue our efforts to educate and mobilize the body politic, across party lines and the rural-urban divide, to understand the importance of moving organic and agro-ecological food and farming to its next stage, which we call regenerative organic.

Beyond general education, we will also step up our efforts to locate, map, publicize, promote, and raise funds for regenerative and organic best practices around the world, developing models for how to implement and scale-up best practices such as our Mexico-based agave agroforestry system for arid and semi-arid areas, rainforest restoration and agroforestry in Latin America and Asia, regenerative “tree-range” poultry and holistic grazing in North America and overseas, and ocean farming, among others.

OCA and RI’s number one priority, working with the Hudson Carbon Project, is to develop scientifically verifiable and credible data and criteria for genuine carbon sequestration (both above and below ground), eco-system restoration, and poverty eradication for regenerative and organic farming and land-use practices. We believe this is the best way to move beyond greenwashing and bogus carbon credits and carbon trading, and to generate a critical mass of public funding and private investment that can pay millions of farmers, ranchers, and land managers across the world a fair price to scale-up regenerative and organic best practices across the globe.

Stay tuned. We will be talking a lot more about scaling-up regenerative best practices in future issues of Organic Bytes.

Ronnie Cummins is co-founder of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Regeneration International, and the author of “Grassroots Rising: A Call to Action on Food, Farming, Climate and a Green New Deal.” 

André Leu: Regenerative Farming Is the Next Stage of Agricultural Evolution

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“Regenerative agriculture and animal husbandry is the next and higher stage of organic food and farming, not only free from toxic pesticides, GMOs, chemical fertilizers, and factory farm production, and therefore good for human health; but also regenerative in terms of the health of the soil.” — Ronnie Cummins

Hardly anyone had heard of regenerative agriculture before 2014. Now it is in the news every day all around the world. A small group of leaders of the organic, agroecology, holistic management, environment and natural health movements started Regeneration International as a truly inclusive and representative umbrella organization.

The concept was initially formed at the United Nations Climate Change Meeting in New York in October 2014. The aim was to set up a global network of like-minded agricultural, environmental and social organizations.

The initial steering committee meetings included Dr. Vandana Shiva from Navdanya, Ronnie Cummins from the Organic Consumers Association, Dr. Hans Herren from The Millennium Institute, Steve Rye from Mercola, and myself, André Leu from IFOAM-Organics International. It was soon expanded to include Precious Phiri from the Africa Savory Hub, Ercilia Sahores from Via Organica in Mexico, Renate Künaste from the German Green Party, John Liu, the China based filmmaker, and Tom Newmark and Larry Kopald from the Carbon Underground.

Our founding meeting was held on a biodynamic farm in Costa Rica in 2015. We deliberately chose to hold it in the global south rather than in North America or Europe and include women and men from every continent to send a message that regeneration was about equity, fairness and inclusiveness. Ronnie Cummins raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for the travel, accommodation, food and other expenses for all the representatives from the global south.

The meeting agreed to form Regeneration International to promote a holistic concept of regeneration. The following mission and vision statements came out of this consultative and inclusive event.

Our mission: To promote, facilitate and accelerate the global transition to regenerative food, farming and land management for the purpose of restoring climate stability, ending world hunger and rebuilding deteriorated social, ecological and economic systems.

Our vision: A healthy global ecosystem in which practitioners of regenerative agriculture and land use, in concert with consumers, educators, business leaders and policymakers, cool the planet, nourish the world and restore public health, prosperity and peace on a global scale.

In six years Regeneration International has grown to more than 360 partner organizations in 70 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, North America and Europe.

The Third Phase

The need to form an international regeneration movement was inspired in part by the development of Organic 3.0 by IFOAM – Organics International. Organic 3.0 was conceived as an ongoing process of enabling organic agriculture to actively engage with social and environmental issues and been seen as a positive agent of change.

Organic 3.0 has six main features. The fourth feature was the “inclusiveness of wider sustainability interests, through alliances with the many movements and organizations that have complementary approaches to truly sustainable food and farming.”

One aim of Organic 3.0 was to work with like-minded organizations, movements and similar farming systems with the aim of making all of agriculture more sustainable. The concept was to have organic agriculture as a positive lighthouse of change to improve the sustainability of mainstream agriculture systems.

Beyond Sustainable

Many people in the organic, agroecology and environmental movements were not happy with the term sustainable for a number of reasons, not the least that it has been completely greenwashed and was seen as meaningless: “Sustainable means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Unfortunately, this definition of sustainable has led to concept of sustainable intensification, where more inputs are used in the same area of land to increase productivity and proportionately lower negative environmental footprints. This concept has been used in sustainable agriculture to justify GMOs, synthetic toxic pesticides and water-soluble chemical fertilizers to produce more commodities per hectare/acre. This was presented as better for the environment than “low yielding” organic agriculture and agroecological systems that need more land to produce the same level of commodities. Sustainable intensification is used to justify the destruction of tropical forests for the industrial scale farming of commodities such as GMO corn and soy that are shipped to large scale animal feedlots in Europe and China. The rationale for this is that less land is needed to produce animal products compared to extensive rangeland systems or organic systems. These sustainable intensification systems meet the above definition of sustainable compared to organic, agroecological and holistically managed, pasture-based systems. Companies like Bayer/Monsanto were branding themselves as the largest sustainable agriculture companies in the world. Many of us believed it was time to move past sustainable.

In this era of the Anthropocene, in which human activities are the dominant forces that negatively affect the environment, the world is facing multiple crises. These include the climate crisis, food insecurity, an epidemic of non-contagious chronic diseases, new pandemics of contagious diseases, wars, migration crises, ocean acidification, the collapse of whole ecosystems, the continuous extraction of resources and the greatest extinction event in geological history.

Do we want to sustain the current status quo or do we want to improve and rejuvenate it? Simply being sustainable is not enough. Regeneration, by definition, improves systems.

Hijacking Standards

Another driver towards regeneration were the widespread concerns about the hijacking of organic standards and production systems by corporate agribusiness. The neglect of the primacy of soil health and soil organic matter, as well as allowing inappropriate plowing methods, were raised as major criticisms.

Jerome Rodale, who popularized the term organic farming in the 1940s, used the term specifically in relation to farming systems that improved soil health by recycling and increasing soil organic matter. Consequently, most organic standards start with this; however certifiers rarely, if ever, check this these days. The introduction of certified organic hydroponics as soilless organic systems was been seen by many as the ultimate sell-out and loss of credibility.

Major concerns and criticisms about the hijacking of certified organic by industrial agriculture were raised by allies in the agroecology and holistic management movements. These included large scale, industrial, organic monocultures and organic Confined Animal Feed Operations (CAFOs). These CAFOS go against the important principles of no cruelty and the need to allow animals to naturally express their behaviors, which are found in most organic standards. The use of synthetic supplements in certified organic CAFOs was seen as undermining the very basis of the credibility of certified organic systems. The lack of enforcement was seen as a major issue. These issues were and still are areas of major dispute and contention within global and national organic sectors.

Many people wanted a way forward and saw the concept of “Regenerative Organic Agriculture,” put forward by Robert Rodale, son of the organic pioneer Jerome Rodale, as a way to resolve this. Bob Rodale used the term regenerative organic agriculture to promote farming practices that go beyond sustainable.

Greenwashing

The term regenerative agriculture is now being widely used, to the point that in some cases it can be seen as greenwashing and as a buzzword used by industrial agricultural systems to increase profits.

Those of us who formed Regeneration International were very aware of the way the large agribusiness corporations hijacked the term sustainable to the point is was meaningless. We were also aware of how they are trying to hijack the term of agroecology, especially through the United Nations systems and in some parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America where a little biodiversity is sprinkled as greenwash over agricultural systems that still use toxic synthetic pesticides and water-soluble chemical fertilizers.

Similarly we have been concerned about the way organic agriculture standards and systems have been hijacked by industrial agribusiness as previously stated in the above section.

The critical issue is, how do we engage with agribusiness in a way that can change their systems in a positive way as proposed in Organic 3.0? Many of the corporations that are adopting regenerative systems are improving their soil organic matter levels using systems such as cover crops. They are also implementing programs that reduce toxic chemical inputs and improving environmental outcomes. These actions should be seen as positive changes in the right direction. They are a start — not an end point. Remember that there are also corporations that are rebranding their herbicide sprayed GMO no-till systems as regenerative.

The opposite of regenerative is degenerative. By definition, agricultural systems that are using degenerative practices and inputs that damage the environment, soil and health — such as synthetic toxic pesticides, synthetic water soluble fertilizers and destructive tillage systems, cannot be considered regenerative — and should not use the term. They must be called out as degenerative.

The Path Forward

From the perspective of Regeneration International, all agricultural systems should be regenerative and organic using the science of agroecology.

Bob Rodale observed that an ecosystem will naturally regenerate once the disturbance stops. Consequently, regenerative agriculture, working with nature, not only maintains resources, it improves them.

Regeneration should be seen as a way to determine how to improve systems and to determine what practices are acceptable and what are degenerative and therefore unacceptable. The criteria to analyze this must be based on the Four Principles of Organic Agriculture. These principles are clear and effective ways to decide what practices are regenerative and what are degenerative.

Consequently, the four principles of organic agriculture are seen as consistent and applicable to regenerative agriculture.

Health: Organic agriculture should sustain and enhance the health of soil, plant, animal, human and planet as one and indivisible.

Ecology: Organic agriculture should be based on living ecological systems and cycles, work with them, emulate them and help sustain them.

Fairness: Organic agriculture should build on relationships that ensure fairness with regard to the common environment and life opportunities.

Care: Organic agriculture should be managed in a precautionary and responsible manner to protect the health and well-being of current and future generations and the environment.

Why Regenerative Agriculture?

The majority of the world’s population is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture. Agricultural producers are amongst the most exploited, food and health insecure, least educated and poorest people on our planet, despite producing most of the food we eat.

Agriculture in its various forms has the most significant effect on land use on the planet. Industrial agriculture is responsible for most of the environmental degradation, forest destruction, toxic chemicals in our food and environment and a significant contributor, up to 50 percent, to the climate crisis. The degenerative forms of agriculture are an existential threat to us and most other species on our planet. We have to regenerate agriculture for social, environmental, economic and cultural reasons.

Soil Focus

The soil is fundamental to all terrestrial life of this planet. Our food and biodiversity start with the soil. The soil is not dirt — it is living, breathing and teeming with life. The soil microbiome is the most complex and richest area of biodiversity on our planet. The area with the greatest biodiversity is the rhizosphere, the region around roots of plants.

Plants feed the soil microbiome with the molecules of life that they create through photosynthesis. These molecules are the basis of organic matter — carbon-based molecules — that all life on earth depends on. Organic matter is fundamental to all life and soil organic matter is fundamental to life in the soil.

Farming practices that increase soil organic matter (SOM) increase fertility, water holding capacity, pest and disease resilience and, thus, the productivity of agricultural systems. Because SOM comes from carbon dioxide fixed through photosynthesis, increasing SOM can have a significant impact in reversing the climate crisis by drawing down this greenhouse gas.

The fact is our health and wealth comes from the soil.

Regenerative agriculture is now being used as an umbrella term for the many farming systems that use techniques such as longer rotations, cover crops, green manures, legumes, compost and organic fertilizers to increase SOM. These include: organic agriculture, agroforestry, agroecology, permaculture, holistic grazing, sylvopasture, syntropic farming and many other agricultural systems that can increase SOM. SOM is an important proxy for soil health — as soils with low levels are not healthy.

However, our global regeneration movement is far more than this.

Regeneration Revolution

We have a lot of work to do. We are currently living well beyond our planetary boundaries and extracting far more than our planet can provide. As Dr. Vandana Shiva puts it: “Regenerative agriculture provides answers to the soil crisis, the food crisis, the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy.”

According to Bob Rodale, regenerative organic agriculture systems are those that improve the resources they use, rather than destroying or depleting them. It is a holistic systems approach to farming that encourages continual innovation for environmental, social, economic and spiritual wellbeing.

The vast majority of the destruction of biodiversity, the greenhouse gases, pesticides, endocrine disrupters, plastics, poverty, hunger and poor nutrition are directly caused by the billionaire corporate cartels and their obscene greed aided by their morally corrupt cronies. We need to continue to call them out for their degenerative practices.

More importantly, we need to build the new regenerative system that will replace the current degenerate system.

We have more than enough resources for everyone to live a life of wellbeing. The world produces around 3 times more food than we need. We have unfair, exploitative and wasteful systems that need to be transformed and regenerated.

We need to regenerate our societies so we must be proactive in ensuring that others have access to land, education, healthcare, income, the commons and empowerment. This must include women, men and youths across all ethnic and racial groups.

We must take care of each other and regenerate our planet. We must take control and empower ourselves to be the agents of change. We need to regenerate a world based on the Four Principles of Organic Agriculture: Health, Ecology Fairness and Care.

Ronnie Cummins, one of our founders, wrote: “Never underestimate the power of one individual: yourself. But please understand, at the same time, that what we do as individuals will never be enough. We’ve got to get organized and we’ve got to help others, in our region, in our nation, and everywhere build a mighty Green Regeneration Movement. The time to begin is now.”

André Leu is the author of The Myths of Safe Pesticides and Poisoning Our Children. He previously served as president of IFOAM — Organics International and is currently the international director of Regeneration International.