The Great Cash-for-Carbon Hustle

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One evening in November, 2021, a group of men assembled at sundown on the terrace of the Ruckomechi Camp, a safari resort on the Zambezi River. Since arriving by private plane, they had gone out lion-spotting, boated down the river, and landed a giant tiger fish; now they were clinking gin-and-tonics. Hippos wallowed in the water below.

The party was led by Renat Heuberger, a forty-four-year-old Swiss entrepreneur with narrow eyes and a cropped copper beard. Heuberger was the chief executive of South Pole, the world’s largest carbon-offsetting firm, and he had come to Zimbabwe to fight off an urgent threat to his company.

A decade earlier, South Pole had signed a deal to sell carbon offsets from an effort to protect a vast swath of forest on the banks of Lake Kariba, upriver from the camp.

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The World Is Changing Too Fast for Us: Organic Farmers on Urgency of French Protests

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Pierre Bretagne woke at 4am to feed the cows on his organic farm near the coastal town of Pornic in western France, then did something he had never dared to before.

He made a cardboard protest banner about the nightmare of French bureaucracy and went to cheer on a go-slow convoy of tractors warning that French farming and the rural way of life was facing collapse. Effigies of dead farmers dangled from nooses on tractor trailers as the convoy drove into the centre of the Brittany city of Rennes, beeping horns and waving banners. “Quality has a price,” read one.

“We’re fed up and exasperated,” says Bretagne, 38. “I love my job – I farm organically because it’s what I believe in and it’s the right thing ethically and in terms of health. In nine years of farming, I’ve never been on a protest; I’d rather be with my animals.

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World Board Approves IFOAM – Organics International’s 2024-2034 Strategy

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Organic farming systems can be a real game changer in a world threatened by ecosystems and climate collapse. Practiced by millions of farmers and supported by hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe, it substantially contributes to the production of healthy, nutritious food and other natural products for a growing population, enables farmers to earn a fair living, regenerates and enhances soil fertility and biodiversity, safeguards and replenishes scarce water resources, mitigates climate change and helps negatively impacted people adapt to that change, especially the most affected and vulnerable.

Recognised globally as part of the solution to the crises of food security, inequality, climate, and loss of biodiversity, the task now is to upscale and further develop organic farming and food systems.

IFOAM – Organics International has designed a new strategy (2024-2034) to take on this challenge!

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Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems: 10th Anniversary Collection

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Celebrating 10 years of Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems

Ten years ago we opened Volume 37, Issue 1, with an editorial that announced the change of the name of the journal from the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture to Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems-ASFS (Gliessman 2013). For the past 10 years, our journal has been at the forefront of scholarly publishing in the “Agroecology Movement.” It has been our goal to help define what this movement is about, to advance scholarship at the cutting edge of transdisciplinary research, and to learn with and from peasants, Indigenous peoples, smallholders, and workers across the food system who are leading the way in transforming food systems worldwide toward justice and sustainability. At the time of the name change, the ecological foundations for agroecology had received much scientific attention, but the social and political components—where change is most needed—remained ill-defined and largely ignored by the Western scientific establishment. It became our journal’s goal to link research, practice, and social change.

To celebrate 10 years of ASFS, in this special collection, we have gathered some of our most-read and most-cited papers from the decade, as well as several “editors picks” we feel exemplify the agroecological focus the journal promotes. The collection will be available open access for the next six months, and we hope you will read and share the articles, reviews, and editorials with your colleagues, students, co-organizers, and more. We also invite you to consider contributing to ASFS in the future, as we look to continuously advance agroecology scholarship rooted in a commitment to transformative food systems change and in solidarity with diverse communities who advance agroecology every day in thinking and practice.

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Don’t Be Duped: GMO Deregulation Compromises Food Transparency

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Next week, the European Union will vote to deregulate GMOs. Deregulating GMOs poses serious risks to consumer freedom of choice and the environment.

Key reasons we must maintain oversight and transparency around genetically engineered foods:

  • Consumer Right to Know: Polls consistently show that most consumers want foods containing GMOs labeled. Deregulation removes the right to make informed choices. Consumers deserve transparency about how their food is produced.
  • Contamination Risks: Deregulation will make traceability and segregation of GMO and non-GMO supply chains difficult, if not impossible. It will also increase the chances of unwanted GMO contamination, putting non-GMO, organic, and regenerative markets at risk.
  • Unintended Consequences: New GMO techniques can make unpredictable genetic changes (off-target effects). Without regulation, potential human, animal, and environmental health risks could go unstudied before widespread exposure.
  • Environmental Impacts: Genetic engineering can create unintentional effects, like fostering herbicide-resistant superweeds. Oversight helps identify ecological risks before they spiral out of control.
  • Reduction of Independent Science: Deregulation marginalizes the role of independent, third-party safety assessments in favor of industry studies. Balanced scientific input is essential to understand impacts.
  • Slippery Slope: Deregulation opens the door to faster and riskier GMO development with less review. This dangerously short-sighted approach undermines sensible precautions that protect our food system.

 

Preserving GMO oversight and labeling upholds the Precautionary principles of social responsibility. Join us in rejecting any attempts to deregulate or redefine GMOs and stand up for environmental health, freedom of choice, and transparency in our global food supply.

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IFOAM – Organics International Stands Firm on the Importance of Grower Group Certification Amidst Litigation Pratum v. USDA

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IFOAM – Organics International is extremely concerned about the litigation against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) initiated by an organic farmer in the USA.

The lawsuit alleges that group certification of organic farmers is being used to cover up fraudulent practices and create an uneven playing field between organic American farmers who have an individual responsibility for certification and organic farmers organised in producer groups that are subject to Internal Control Systems (ICSs).

It questions whether USDA has the authority to delegate the responsibility of inspecting every farm every year and questions whether the new regulation provides for an adequate number of third-party inspections of producer group members to meet the intent of the organic legislation.

The litigation highlights widespread misunderstanding about the role and function of grower group certification, which we seek to clarify in the explainer below.

IFOAM – Organics International considers group certification a vital tool for ensuring millions of organic farmers around the world can access global markets whilst ensuring the robust integrity of the products produced. We understand that the USDA’s new regulation for producer groups differs from both the recent EU legislation and IFOAM Norms for grower groups in a few ways, but still support the regulatory recognition of producer groups in the USDA rule [1].

Grower groups play a key role in supporting organic farming and provide organic market access for millions of honest, hard-working smallholder farmers that care for the land and provide ecological benefits. As a result, they should be considered a strong force for good in rapidly scaling climate and nature-friendly farming that mitigates and addresses the biggest crises of our times.

We also recognise the crucial importance of robust governance of ICS. The oversight process for grower groups is different to the process for individual farmers. An appropriate level of rigour must be maintained in both approaches.

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“Just a Cowboy”

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Over the past 20-plus years, my family and I have been fortunate to work on ranches from Nevada to Florida and from Montana to Mexico. I have gained an appreciation for good stockmen in all parts of the country and have learned much from the way they care for their livestock and the range.

In many discussions with these men and women, I have heard a common, self-effacing phrase. “I’m just a cowboy,” they say, in a manner that sells themselves short of their true role and abilities. My purpose in writing this article is to help all of us who care for livestock on the ranch or farm reflect on the value of our daily duties and expound on the great good that our complex efforts produce.

There are three aspects of sustainability that must be considered to assure the future of a livestock operation: namely ecological, financial and social.

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Can Humus Rescue the Future? Regenerative Agriculture Offers Openings for the Organic Sector

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First of all, the term regenerative agriculture – also known as agroecology – is self-explanatory. It means restoring something that was there originally. A regenerative approach focuses on renaturing the soil and the entire ecosystem that’s so important to climate change. More precisely, this kind of agriculture aims to build up humus – which by now has shrunk to one or two percent of its original level in Europe1, yet is essential for binding CO2.
Organic farmer Benedikt Bösel, with his Gut und Bösel farm in Brandenburg, offers a model business when it comes to regenerative farming. He was one of the first farmers in Germany to convert his farm – which now covers 3,000 hectares – to regenerative agriculture and forestry. In the spring of 2018, two years after he took over the farm from his parents, he encountered a straightforward trigger for changing his approach. “The spring drought was so extreme.
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Afsa Launches 21 Seed Case Studies in 10 Countries

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In Africa, farmers’ seeds are the basis of agricultural production and diversified and healthy food systems across the continent. Farmer Seed Systems (PSS) are the dominant system for growing food crops and conserving agrobiodiversity for family farmers. They persist and thrive despite well-funded programs that promote corporate seeds and the industrial food and farming regime of which they are a part, while receiving little or no public policy support and being frequently denigrated in discourse. audience.

Seeds are synonymous with culture, tradition, spirituality, cooperation, solidarity and survival; they provide diverse and healthy foods to feed families every day, as well as livelihoods. Today’s seeds embody centuries of knowledge about how to store them, exchange them, plant them, and guide them to fruitful expression. The rich diversity of Africa’s food crops is due to the diversity of ecosystems and local agricultural communities, especially women, the guardians of the seeds.

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Is 2024 the Year Regenerative Agriculture Takes Root?

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In 1942, J.I. Rodale first popularized the term organic in the U.S. with the launch of Organic Farming and Gardening Magazine. Some 45 years later, in the 1970s, J.I.’s son Robert Rodale introduced the phrase “regenerative organic.” Robert’s goal was to describe an approach to farming that combined organic practices with a more holistic approach to land management and a focus on rebuilding soil health. Yet it’s only been in the past few years that the term has gained more widespread traction.

With the release in 2023 of two full-length feature documentary films, Common Ground and Organic Rising, along with increased adoption among farmers and producers, awareness of regenerative agriculture is set to gain ground in the coming year among large-scale food manufacturers, policymakers, researchers, the general public and more. Today, advocates of regenerative agriculture say it is the best way to produce healthier food and promote local and rural economies.

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