An Open Letter to His Holiness Pope Francis, on the Occasion of His Visit to Michoacán, Mexico, Winter Sanctuary of the Monarch Butterfly

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[ English | Español ]

February 16, 2016

Contact:

Ercilia Sahores, ercilia@organicconsumers.org, +52 (55) 6257 7901

Endorsed by Bipartisan Faith-Based, Indigenous, Environmental, Natural Health, Justice, Consumer and Farming Groups.

We welcome you and your message of “climate as the common good” to our country. We urge world leaders and ordinary citizens to honor your call to “hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” And to heed your advice to “adopt clear and firm measures in support of small producers” in order to address the ethical, economic, and environmental crises confronting humanity.

In Mexico, the center of origin of maize, nearly 60 varieties of this staple grain and hundreds of its subfamilies are at risk of extinction due to profit-driven corporations seeking to cultivate genetically modified (GMO) corn across Mexico. In 2013, the people responded by filing a civil lawsuit headed by 53 individuals from the scientific, farming, indigenous, consumer, artistic and environmental communities, as well as 20 nonprofit organizations.

For centuries, small farmers in Mexico cultivated their maize according to a regenerative agroecological farming system called the milpa. This proven system integrates a diverse variety of grains, pulses and vegetables, providing foundation for a healthy diet while simultaneously building soil fertility and supporting agrobiodiversity. We respectfully ask for your continued support in protecting regenerative organic food systems like the milpa, and the rights of “Every campesino…to possess a reasonable allotment of land where he can establish his home, work for subsistence of his family and a secure life.”

In order to protect small farmers, we must first acknowledge the connections between food, farming and climate change. As the largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, the agriculture industry must be reformed in order fix the climate crisis.[1] According to the UN, a global transition from industrial agriculture to local ecological agriculture offers our best chance at mitigating the impacts of climate change on food security.[2] As you so aptly put it, “Climate change is a moral issue.” And we also humbly suggest that a global transition to regenerative agroecological food systems is an equally important moral issue.

In this country, as in so many others, the global spread of industrial agriculture and its use of petroleum-based fertilizers, agrotoxins and GMOs has devastated the health, biodiversity and sacred beauty of the world. A clear example of this devastation can be seen here in the state of Michoacán, winter sanctuary of the monarch butterfly. Over the past two decades, monarch populations have declined by 90 percent due primarily to the use of the herbicide glyphosate in Roundup Ready GMO crops, illegal logging and habitat loss.[3] Tragically, the few monarchs remaining may face an even greater challenge in the future; scientists indicate that rising temperatures due to climate change threaten to damage more than 70 percent of the monarch’s remaining winter habitat by the end of the century.[4] Fortunately, research has shown that regenerative organic systems can help to reverse rising temperatures by sequestering billions of tons of annual CO2 emissions back into the soil, while restoring agrobiodiversity (Rodale, 2014)[5].

We share your conviction that everything in the world is connected, and that to seek “only a technical remedy to each environmental problem which comes up is to separate what is in reality interconnected and to mask the true and deepest problems of the global system.”

As world leaders prepare to gather here in Mexico for the COP13 Convention On Biodiversity in December, we ask you to continue to speak out about the role that industrial agriculture has played in destroying our soil, health and biodiversity, even as it has failed to alleviate world hunger.

There is a solution to food insecurity, climate change and biodiversity loss. We must opt for regenerative organic agriculture. The urgency of this problem demands that we join forces and work together to achieve change. We thank you for your courage and your commitment to the world’s poorest, and we accept your challenge to approach these complex crises by seeking solutions that not only protect nature, but also combat poverty and restore dignity to the excluded.

Sincerely,

La Asociación de Consumidores Orgánicos

Endorsing Groups:

Agua para la Vida, México
Agua para Tod@s, México
Anec, México
Asia Pacific Network for Food Sovereignty (APNFS), Philippines
Becket Films, USA
Beyond GM, United Kingdom
Beyond Pesticides Network Canada, Canada
Biodentistry, México
Biodiversity for a Liveable Climate, USA
Bosque Sustentable AC, México
Carnaval del Maíz, México
Cedar Circle Farm, USA
Center for Sustainable Medicine, USA
Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Francisco de Vitoria, México
Centro de la Tierra, México
CILAS, México
Circle Squared Foundation, The Netherlands
COBOSPO, México
Colectivo Zacahitzco, México
Colectivo Zócalo, México
Comunidades Campesinas y Urbanas, México
Cool Planet, USA
Dr. Pablo Jaramillo López, Ph.D. UNAM, (National Autonomous University of Mexico), México
FAT, México
Favianna Rodriguez Artist, USA
FIAN, México
Fundación Semillas de Vida AC, México
GEA, México
GMO Inside, USA
Greenpeace Mexico, México
Grupo Ecologico Sierra Gorda IAP, México
Grupo Vicente Gutierrez, Tlaxcala, México
Guereni Vendie, México
Kids Right to Know, Canada
Kiss the Ground, USA
LATINDADD, México
MAELA México, México
MaOGM, México
Milliones Against Monsanto, USA
Millones Contra Monsanto, México
NTC-SME, México
Nutiva, USA
Organic Consumers Association, USA
Pasticultores del Desierto, AC, México
People’s Lobby, USA
Programa Ambiental de la Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo, México
Rainman Landcare Foundation, South Africa
RASA, México
Red Nacional de Género y Economía, México
Reg Maíz, México
Regeneration International, USA
RMALC, México
Shumei International, Japan
Sin Maíz No Hay País, México
SME, México
Spiral Farm House, Nepal
STUNAM, México
SUEUM, Michoacán, México
The Hummingbird Project, USA
The Rules, USA
UCCS, México
Valhalla Movement, Canada
Vía Orgánica AC, México
Viva Sierra Gorda, México
El Maíz Más Pequeño AC, México
Caminos de Agua AC, Mexico

[1] https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ditcted2012d3_en.pdf

[2] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?LangID=E&NewsID=16702

[3] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141010-monarch-butterfly-migration-threatened-plan/

[4] https://e360.yale.edu/feature/to_protect_monarch_butterfly_a_plan_to_save_the_sacred_firs/2942/

[5] https://rodaleinstitute.org/assets/RegenOrgAgricultureAndClimateChange_20140418.pdf

Stewardship with Vision – Episode 1: Jeff Laszlo

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As a result of the O’Dell Creek restoration, Granger Ranches has documented a 900% increase in waterfowl species and a 600% increase in species diversity. The ranch now hosts at least fifteen species of concern, including the American White Pelican, Clark’s Grebe, Great Blue Heron, White-Faced Ibis, Franklin’s Gull, Caspian Tern, Long-billed Curlew and American Bittern, Baird’s Sparrow, McCown’s Longspur, Sprague’s Pipit, Burrowing Owl, Short-eared Owl, Ferruginous Hawk. Trumpeter Swans, once gravely imperiled, take refuge on the ranch with 20-50 wintering annually. Raptor species increased from four to ten. Up to 5,000 Rocky Mountain Sandhill Cranes now make annual migratory visits. The wetlands are also supporting river otters, moose, deer, and rare and sensitive flowers.

Watch More Videos on Western Landowners Alliance’s Youtube Channel

How Wolves Change Rivers

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When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the United States after being absent nearly 70 years, the most remarkable “trophic cascade” occurred. What is a trophic cascade and how exactly do wolves change rivers? George Monbiot explains in this movie remix.

Watch More Videos on Sustainable Human’s Youtube Channel

Wild bee decline threatens US crop production

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The first national study to map U.S. wild bees suggests they’re disappearing in many of the country’s most important farmlands–including California’s Central Valley, the Midwest’s corn belt, and the Mississippi River valley.

If losses of these crucial pollinators continue, the new nationwide assessment indicates that farmers will face increasing costs–and that the problem may even destabilize the nation’s crop production.

The findings were published December 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research team, led by Insu Koh at the University of Vermont, estimates that wild bee abundance between 2008 and 2013 declined in 23% of the contiguous U.S. The study also shows that 39% of US croplands that depend on pollinators–from apple orchards to pumpkin patches–face a threatening mismatch between rising demand for pollination and a falling supply of wild bees.

In June of 2014, the White House issued a presidential memorandum warning that “over the past few decades, there has been a significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies.” The memo noted the multi-billion dollar contribution of pollinators to the US economy–and called for a national assessment of wild pollinators and their habitats.

Keep Reading in EurekAlert!

Green Gold

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“It’s possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems.” Environmental film maker John D. Liu documents large-scale ecosystem restoration projects in China, Africa, South America and the Middle East, highlighting the enormous benefits for people and planet of undertaking these efforts globally.

Watch More Videos on Permaculture Day’s Youtube Channel

Beavers are being looked at as little climate change fighting machines

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Author: Sarah Koenigsberg

Like beavers themselves, the human subjects of Koenigsberg’s documentary, The Beaver Believers, are climate change activists.

“They’re almost seeing climate change as an opportunity to act, to get involved, to fix problems we’ve actually had in our watersheds for several decades now. That just struck me as exactly the kind of inspiring climate change story that we really need to be telling,” says Koenigsberg, a Washington-based filmmaker.

“The Beaver Believers” features the stories of people who share the common passion of restoring the beaver in the West by trapping and relocating the animals to habitats that could use a beaver’s touch.

Sherry Tippee, a hairdresser and an animal lover from Colorado, heard of beavers that were going to be killed because they had taken up residence in an urban environment. She saved them, and had gone on to become the leading live trapper in all of Colorado.

Of the six people featured in the film, some work for the federal government or the forest service, while others are like Tippee: people who have found purpose reintroducing beavers to their former lands.

Before European fur trappers arrived in America, beavers numbered in the millions.

Keep Reading on PRI

A Message from Paris: We Can Reverse Global Warming

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“Humanity stands at the edge of an abyss. We have destroyed the planet, its biodiversity, our water and the climate, and through this destruction, we have destroyed the ecological context for our survival as a species. Ecological destruction and resource grab are generating conflicts, which are being accelerated into full-blown wars and violence. A context of fear and hate is overtaking the human imagination. We need to sow the seeds of peace—peace with the earth and each other, and in so doing, create hope for our future—as one humanity and as part of one Earth community.” – Vandana Shiva, Terra Viva, Pact for the Earth

November 26, 2015

Twenty-three years after the first United Nations Earth/Climate Summit in 1992, in the wake of a savage terrorist attack on November 13 that traumatized Europe, a multinational contingent of activists and stakeholders are gathered here for the COP 21 Climate Summit. A growing number of us here in Paris are determined to change the prevailing gloom and doom conversation on climate, and instead focus on practical solutions. Frustrated by the slow pace of global efforts to address climate change, angered by the “business-as-usual” arrogance of Big Oil, King Coal, industrial agribusiness and indentured politicians, a critical mass of the global grassroots appears ready to step up the pace and embrace a new solutions-based message and strategy that we in the organic movement call Regeneration.

Ten thousand of us took to the streets of Paris on November 28, peacefully defying the government ban on street demonstrations. I, along with a delegation of North American and Latin American Regeneration activists, joined the protest, holding hands with our French and European comrades in a human chain stretching for miles. Our section of the animated chain, punctuated with colorful homemade signs, T-shirts and banners, was designated “Solutions.” Lined up at the corner of Boulevard Voltaire and Allée du Philosophe, our boisterous group’s most popular chant, repeated over and over again in Spanish, English and French, drawing smiles and thumbs-up reactions from Parisians on the streets, was “El pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido” (“The people united will never be defeated).”

Standing at the crossroads of a climate Apocalypse, a growing consensus appears to be emerging: We must not only phase out Big Oil, King Coal and industrial food and farming, and stop polluting the already supersaturated atmosphere and the oceans with additional greenhouse gases, but we must also strip out or draw down approximately 200 billion tons of excess CO2 already blanketing the atmosphere. And we must do this utilizing proven, “shovel-ready” regenerative organic farming and land use practices.

As of today, December 3, more than 50 national governments, activist organizations and stakeholder organizations (including the Organic Consumers Association and our Mexico affiliate, Via Organica) have signed on to the French government’s “4 Per 1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate” declaration. The declaration emphasizes that agriculture, and agricultural soils in particular, can play a crucial role in reversing global warming and increasing global food security.

Based on a growing body of farming practices and scientific evidence, the French government’s Initiative invites all partners to declare or to implement practical programs for carbon sequestration in soil and for the types of farming methods used to promote it (e.g. agroecology, agroforestry, conservation agriculture and landscape management). According to Andre Leu, president of IFOAM Organics International, the French Initiative on sequestering atmospheric carbon in soils via regenerative ag practices is “historic, marking the first time that international climate negotiators and stakeholders have recognized the strategic imperative of transforming and regenerating our global food and farming system in order to reverse global warming.”

Zero emissions are necessary, but not enough

Rejecting the standard discourse of 350.org and other climate groups that promote a tunnel-vision focus on “zero emissions by 2050” as the sole solution to stave off runaway global warming and climate catastrophe, a growing corps of Regenerators here in Paris, under the banner of “Refroidir la Planète” (“Cool the Planet”) and “Alimenter le Monde” (“Feed the World’) have begun to build a Regeneration International movement.

This movement is inspired by the practices of thousands of organic farmers, holistic ranchers, pastoralists and indigenous communities across the globe who are demonstrating that truly regenerative farming, grazing, forestry and land use practices, scaled up globally, sequestering in some cases up to 5-10 tons of carbon per acre per year,  literally have the potential to reverse global warming. The co-benefits of this massive recarbonization and regeneration of the soil, grasslands and forests include: reducing rural poverty, improving plant and animal health and food quality, increasing natural water storage in soils, building crop resilience restoring public health, and last, but not least, reducing global strife.

For those who have never heard of regenerative organic food, farming and land use, here’s a short fact sheet (pdf) and a longer annotated bibliography. This new Regeneration paradigm is based on the biological fact that healthy soils, grasslands and forests can literally draw down, through enhanced plant photosynthesis, enough excess carbon from the atmosphere to bring us back to pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million of CO2.

As IFOAM states in a handout this week at the Paris Climate Summit: “We need to Reverse Climate Change—not just slow it down.” IFOAM goes on to explain:

We need to do more than just stop the increase in greenhouse gas emissions… We also have to drawdown the excess CO2 in the atmosphere to return the climate to the level where it should be—the pre-industrial level. Soils are the greatest carbon sink after the oceans, and hold significantly more carbon than the atmosphere and biomass combined. There is a growing body of published science indicating that regenerative farming systems, including organic agriculture, can strip significant amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere and sequester it into the soil as soil organic matter. The co-benefits of this regeneration include greater resilience to adverse weather events… better adaptation to climate change… and food security… Regenerative organic farming is based upon current good practices and is a low-cost, shovel-ready solution that does not require untested, potentially catastrophic, hugely expensive geoengineering or carbon capture and storage technologies.

IFOAM’s leaflet goes on to point out that regenerative farming and land use practices are not being put forward as a substitute for stopping fossil fuel emissions, but rather as an essential complementary strategy that is absolutely necessary: “Soil carbon sequestration… and eliminating food and farming emissions… cannot be used to justify continued greenhouse gas pollution… or business as usual… We need to reverse climate change, not just sustain current greenhouse gas levels.”

Regenerating the body politic: connecting the dots for a new “Movement of Movements”

 Global Regeneration requires a revolution, not only in our thinking, but in our heretofore tunnel vision, “my issue is more important than your issue,” “my constituency is more important than your constituency,” model of grassroots organizing. Disempowed, exploited people, overwhelmed by the challenges of everyday survival, don’t have the luxury of connecting the dots between all the issues and focusing on the Big Picture. It’s the job of Regenerators to globalize the struggle, to globalize hope and connect the dots between issues, communities and constituencies. We need to move beyond mere mitigation or sustainability concepts that simply depress or demobilize people to a bold new global strategy of Regeneration.

Healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy animals, healthy people, healthy climate . . . our physical and economic health, our very survival as a species, is directly connected to the soil, biodiversity and the health and fertility of our food and farming systems.

So who will carry out this global Regeneration Revolution?

Of course we must continue, and in fact vastly increase, our pressure on governments and corporations to change public policies and marketplace practices. As indicated above, the most encouraging development at the Climate Summit here in Paris is that a growing number of countries and activist networks are endorsing the French government’s .4% Initiative to pay farmers to move away from the climate destructive practices of industrial agriculture and to sequester carbon in their soils. But in order to truly overturn “business-as-usual” we must inspire and mobilize a vastly larger climate change coalition than the one we have now. Food, climate and economic justice advocates must unite forces so we can educate and mobilize a massive grassroots army of Earth Regenerators: three billion small farmers and rural villagers, ranchers, pastoralists, forest dwellers, urban agriculturalists and indigenous communities—aided and abetted by several billion conscious consumers and urban activists.

The time is late. Circumstances are dire. But we still have time to regenerate the Earth and the body politic.

Here are four things you can do to join the Regeneration Movement.

(1) Change the climate conversation in your local community or in your local organization from doom and gloom to one of positive solutions, based upon the Regeneration perspective.  Join our Regeneration International Facebook page. (https://www.facebook.com/regenerationinternational) Publicize and share strategic articles, videos and best practices. If you need to study up on how soil sequestration works, read and re-read this pamphlet (https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/soil-carbon-restoration-can-biology-do-job) and go through the major articles in our annotated bibliography (https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/regenerative-agriculture-annotated-bibliography)

(2) Join or help organize a local or regional Regeneration working group. If you’re ready to become a Regeneration organizer send an email to info@regenerationinternational.org

(3) Boycott “degenerate” foods. Regenerate your health and your diet. Get ready to join OCA and Regeneration International’s soon-to-be-announced global campaign and boycott against Monsanto, factory farms, GMO animal feeds, biofuels and so-called “Climate-Smart Agriculture.” One of the most important things you can do today and every day is to buy and consume organic, grass-fed, locally produced, climate friendly foods.

(4) Help organize and plan regeneration conferences and meetings. Make your plans now to attend our Regeneration International global climate and biodiversity Summit in Mexico City December. 1-3, 2016.

Ronnie Cummins is international director of the Organic Consumers Association https://www.organicconsumers.org/ (U.S.) and Via Organica https://viaorganica.org/ (Mexico) and a member of the Regeneration International org steering committee. He wrote this from the COP 21 Climate Summit, Paris, France, December 3, 2015

 

Hornbill Hunting Impacts Spread of Forests

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Author: PTI

NEW DELHI: Hunting down hornbills has a direct impact on the spread of forests as the bird is known for its seed dispersal abilities, a study has found.

The study was conducted by the Indian Institute of Science and Mysore-based Nature Conservation Foundation in Namdapha Tiger Reserve and Miao reserve forest in Arunachal Pradesh. The Namdapha Tiger Reserve is the third largest national park in the country in terms of area. The Miao reserve forest is located to the west of Namdapha National park. Both are known for hornbill sightings. The former is a known to be a well-protected area, while the latter is hugely disturbed.

The Namdapha Tiger Reserve is the third largest national park in the country in terms of area. The Miao reserve forest is located to the west of Namdapha Tiger Reserve.

The study indicated steep decline in both fruiting plants and hornbills, and very low rates of seed dispersal in the disturbed Miao reserve forest, as compared to the Namdapha Tiger Reserve.

Keep Reading in The Economic Times

Land Restoration With Holistic Management

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Karoo Region, South Africa: (On left) Holistic Planned Grazing (HPG). Photo credits: Kroon Family


Karoo Region, South Africa

This is a picture (above) taken in Eastern Cape in South Africa – Karoo country – showing desertification with low stocking rates and conventional grazing on the right, and high stocking rates using holistic planned grazing on the left.  The land on the right continues to deteriorate supporting fewer animals, while the land on the right improves, supporting more. The property on the left has been under holistic management since the 1970s. Average rain fall is approximately 230 mm (9-in) / yr.

Las Pilas Ranch, Chihuahuan Desert Region, Mexico

[Photos taken from the same spot. The arrow marks the same point on the horizon. Photo credits, Guillermo Osuna.]

The Las Pilas Ranch in Coahuila, Mexico, is a model of ecological restoration using Holistic Planned Grazing. Over a twenty five year period from 1978 to 2003, the barren landscape was completely revived. The images below show the transformation. Although the first picture is from 1963, the restoration with Holistic Management didn’t actually start until 1978. During the restoration period, the livestock population was doubled and grazing was done according to a plan that paid close attention to grass health. The top landscape from 2003 actually has six-times the water as the the lower landscape from 1963. The water is held in the soil and in the plants and trees. Previously a 1-inch rain would fill the trough from runoff. Now a 6-inch rain does not cause standing water in the low point. It is all absorbed. The trough is no longer needed because the streams flow year round. See a tale of restoration case study.

Keep Reading on Planet Tech Associations

The Surprising Leading Contributor to Pollution: Agriculture

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Did you know that the modern agricultural system is responsible for putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the actual burning of fossil fuels? Understanding this reveals an obvious answer to pressing global problems.

There are only three places for carbon to go: land, air, and water. Our agricultural practices have removed massive amounts of valuable carbon from land, transferring it into air and water. Carbon management is critically important regardless of one’s views of climate change.

By paying greater attention to carbon management, we have the opportunity to make a dramatic difference in this area, which is having major negative consequences to our agriculture, our air, and our oceans, lakes, streams and rivers.

One important factor that some experts believe is KEY for reversing environmental devastation like desertification, which is when land turns to desert, is to return much of our land to grasslands and build a network of herbivore economics.

There is no better way to improve the conditions for animals, solve the carbon problem, bring more revenue to farmers, and improve our health by purchasing nutritious foods from properly pastured animals – vs the horrible CAFO model based on the monocultures of corn and soy fed to the animals in questionable conditions in which they are proactively fed antibiotics to make them fat and keep them alive in such atrocious conditions.

Keep Reading on Mercola.com