Tag Archive for: environment

La agricultura regenerativa debe escalar o morir

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Semánticamente, «sostenible» puede ofrecer supervivencia, pero «regenerativo» invoca esperanza y, por lo tanto, inspira una visión más positiva. En la práctica, la agricultura regenerativa se basa en un conjunto de principios agrícolas que buscan trabajar con la naturaleza para ayudarla a prosperar en lugar de simplemente reducir sus pérdidas. El enfoque central es la agricultura de una manera que mejore la salud del suelo, porque eso es lo que permite que el proverbial ganso continúe poniendo aún más y mejores huevos a largo plazo.

La agricultura regenerativa tiene múltiples beneficios colaterales que incluyen una mayor rentabilidad agrícola, secuestro de carbono del suelo, restauración del hábitat, resistencia a la sequía y las inundaciones, una mayor densidad de nutrientes y una reducción de la erosión y la escorrentía tóxica. A menos que sea el vendedor de productos químicos, hay muchas cosas que le gustan.

“SEGUIR LEYENDO EN BLUEBERRIES CONSULTING”

A Call for Governments to Save Soil

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Soil creates life from death. The production of more than 95% of the food we eat relies on soil, a heady mix of rock particles, decaying organic matter, roots, fungi and microorganisms. Yet this precious resource is eroding at a global average of 13.5 tonnes per hectare per year. Instead of nourishing crops, fertile topsoil is ending up in inconvenient places such as ditches, reservoirs and the ocean.

Microbiologist Jo Handelsman takes on the challenge of making readers care in A World Without Soil, aided by environmental researcher Kayla Cohen. Their prologue takes the form of a letter about soil erosion that Handelsman wishes she had sent to US president Barack Obama while working in the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy in the mid-2010s. Alas, she did not understand the true gravity of the problem until the waning days of the administration. Her biggest regret? That she wasn’t able to make soil management the federal priority she thinks it should be.

“KEEP READING ON NATURE”

Agroecology Can Be Our New Food System

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Corporations fear losing profits but going chemical-free in farming will be unavoidable to save our living planet.

We are under constant pressure today to optimise – our bodies, the way we work and how we produce food. Uniformity is the rule, instead of diversity. But this industrial way of intensive food production is killing our living planet and locks people up in poverty. It’s time for a radical sustainable agricultural turnround.

So what is the worry about being fully sustainable in our farming? It is the lack of political consensus on what sustainable farming really means. This ambiguity creates room for greenwashing of intensive farming while suppressing and co-opting alternative approaches such as agroecology.

Low productivity is a common argument used against agroecology – but growing evidence in research proves its potential to increase yields – without any chemical inputs.

“KEEP READING ON THE ECOLOGIST”

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.” 

Growing Soil for a Regenerative Future

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‘Regenerative Ag’ might be the new trending phrase, but the meaning goes back to the beginning of agriculture.

It’s hard to open an agricultural publication these days without reading the words “regenerative agriculture”. The words are new, but the practices are as old as agrarian civilization. The concept is easy — work with nature rather than against it. The management practices, on the other hand, can be as diverse as the farms that implement them.

The premise of the movement values soil health above all other components of the production agriculture equation, allowing that soil health is the foundation for every possible throughput and output.

KEEP READING ON “SEED WORLD”

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. 

Regenerative Agriculture Receives Government Boost

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The Government is investing in farm sustainability, this time backing two new research projects to investigate the impacts of regenerative farming practices.

“We’re contributing $2.8 million to a $3.85 million five-year project with co-investment by Synlait Milk and Danone that aims to understand how to measure and manage soil health to boost environmental and economic performance on New Zealand farms,” Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor announced on Sunday.

The announcement coincides with World Soil Day, which aims to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being by addressing the growing challenges in soil management, fighting soil salinisation, increasing soil awareness and encouraging societies to improve soil health.

“We simply cannot take soil health for granted. It’s the basis of our food systems, and also New Zealand’s economic health.

KEEP READING ON “SUNLIVE”

¿Qué es la agricultura regenerativa?

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La agricultura regenerativa es un método de cultivo que “mejora los recursos que utiliza, en lugar de destruirlos o agotarlos”, según el Instituto Rodale, una de las organizaciones que defienden este enfoque. Se hace mucho hincapié en la visión holística del agroecosistema, y se emplean diversas técnicas.

En la agricultura convencional, a menudo se excava el suelo y se deja desnudo después de la cosecha. La labranza y el arado erosionan el suelo, privándolo de sus nutrientes y liberando grandes cantidades de dióxido de carbono (CO2). Al adoptar prácticas de labranza cero, los agricultores pueden reducir la alteración física del suelo, manteniendo su estructura general y evitando también la erosión.

Los sistemas regenerativos también aumentan la fertilidad del suelo mediante la plantación de cultivos de cobertura entre temporadas (como el trigo), el empleo de rotaciones de cultivos y la aplicación de compost y estiércol animal, lo que restaura el microbioma del suelo para promover los nutrientes. Los fertilizantes sintéticos utilizados en la agricultura convencional han creado desequilibrios en la estructura y función de estas comunidades microbianas del suelo.

SEGUIR LEYENDO EN “DIÁLOGO CHINO”

Regenerative Ag Has to Prove Itself

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Regenerative agriculture has a key role to play in pulling carbon into the world’s soils and helping fight climate change, says a U.S. soil scientist who is studying the practice.

However, it will need to both carefully manage the agricultural role of carbon and be able to prove its value to the wider world.

“In the midst of all these challenges … soils are really central,” said Francesca Cotrufo, a soil specialist with the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University.

“We really need to do something to restore carbon.”

Cotrufo told farmers at Manitoba Forage and Grasslands Association’s annual regenerative ag conference that enormous amounts of soil carbon have been lost over decades of tillage, disturbance agriculture, simple rotations and indifference. Erosion and stripped soil have emitted more carbon than they have stored, he said.

Soil organic matter proportions have collapsed, allowing significant amounts of stored carbon to escape. That has led to agriculture being one of the biggest contributors to carbon escape among industries.

KEEP READING ON “THE WESTERN PRODUCER”

How Would You Use Your Time If You Had Only 3 Minutes to Live? – An Interview with Por Kham Deuang Pasee

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Por Kham Deuang is a farmer elder of Buriram, Thailand who has practiced regeneration in his own way for over 40 years and inspired many with his wisdom and ways.
This however I originally thought was more or less apparent. And while I do hope to share more about his methods,  I felt what was most important was this way he understands our role, purpose, and potential as humans.

Photo credit: Por Kham Deuang Pasee

Interview, translation and write up by Michael B. Commons, Earth Net Foundation, Thailand

Por Kham Deuang-  “We have been using our lives incorrectly until they are used up, exchanging them for what we do not know… If I only had 3 minutes of life to live in this world what would I do?  What would I exchange my life for?

             If I only had 3 minutes to live, I would exchange this life for planting trees.  Why?  Because in 3 minutes, I cannot do anything.  But  if I plant a tree, boop, that tree will live on and grow.  It can continue to live for 100 years.  So I have been able to extend 3 minutes into 100 years. If we used the 3 minutes for something else, it would just disappear.  But now we have exchanged our 3 minutes of life for the life of a tree.  That tree can grow and provide for the whole world and reduce its suffering. Trees purify the air, hold down the soil and increase its fertility, make the clouds grow, support mushrooms to grow, and they then can spread seeds far and wide that will bring new generations of trees and their benefits.

            What can I do in just 3 minutes?  Most uses would just be lost, but exchanging my time for a tree, I really have something of value.  Now consider exchanging 1 hour, this is even more interesting to exchange. Or what if we exchanged the rest of our lives, even more interesting.  For trees there is no stopwatch ticking, three minutes of our lives has passed but for the trees they may live on and on.  We have exchanged 3 minutes of our lives for 100 years of life and then our grandchildren can go on to care the trees, their seeds and seedlings which may go on and on from there.  Then we haven’t died wasting our lives, we have exchanged the time in our lives for something of greater value.

            If one understands this, one will not be confused as to how we are to live on this planet and use its resources, it will be clear.  This is the way to live correctly.  If we live correctly we are one with our world, and our world will be beautiful and flourish. We will pass this on to the generations that come after us who will not suffer troubles as their ancestors took good care of this inheritance.  But now all of the ancestors have just created problems for their offspring.  None of the children and grandchildren appreciate ancestors like this.  But if we are ancestors doing like I practice, then our children and grandchildren will click “like” for us.”

Michael Commons:  When we were together in Hat Yai you talked about how to live in balance with nature,  how to find happiness.  Please share more about your thoughts?

P K D: “To talk about this I have to go back to the past to understand the roots and reasons.  The Earth must be born before humanity.  Our Earth is just right in many ways for us.  It was in the right place and distance from the sun and with good light and atmosphere, and then so many years passed before there were trees, parasites, or mobile phone signals.  Much had to develop such as minerals, water, fish and more before humans could live here.  We must understand that everything came before humans and everything that humans would need was ready for their needs without us (humanity) having done anything.  When humanity was born, boop- we had all of this without need to build or create anything, whether it’s the air we breathe, the rain that falls, food to feed us; we could just use this.  But once we started using these resources that our planet created for us, we hadn’t learnt that these resources were created by our Earth and how we could steward and care for these resources so there would be more and more and they would be better and better as for certain the number of humans had to increase.  Back then there were not many humans, but our numbers had to increase and increase.  If we considered this, we would know that we needed to steward and build upon this inherited abundance so it could provide for us into the future.

            We did not go on that path but we have taken everything and put it into a big pile in front of us and said we are rich. We take and exploit without returning or restoring anything. This was our failing since the beginning.  Once we started off with our first steps in the wrong direction, however far we keep going it is still in the wrong direction, and the farther we go the farther we are from the truth.  Thus people cannot live with other people if they are all fighting for the same resources which are not sufficient. The more they fight for resources, the more problems and troubles follow.  What we seek to solve is not these problems, the ways we try to solve our problems create yet other problems, thus they keep unfolding and unfolding.  As all that provides for our lives was not created by us, thus we cannot build and restore this in a short period; we will not make it in time…  Just like with our planetary resources, when we want to regenerate them we cannot do this fast enough.  Once the glaciers have melted away we cannot just make enough ice to put there and replace them.  At this point I don’t really know if we will be able to act fast enough, but we need to start.  This is our great mistake. Going back to what I recounted of my own life, this is how it is at the planetary level but also for our families.  This is not the failing of one person. 7 billion people are all doing this, the same mistake.  So to go back we need to each do this ourselves.   We cannot go back through a government policy, a project, or a UN policy, because the way this came to be was not by these ways.  We need to start to do this each on a human level, we need to reprogram our minds.  A new way of thinking and all new information.  We have to completely change our structures and thinking.  A completely new program.  It needs to be correct and written by ourselves to reach the objectives we have set for all humanity, our planet and environment.

            From this I came to trees.  Looking at what we can do to restore this, I have found trees to be the key answer and tool for regeneration.  Trees are a tool and a way that, when you share and explain, few will fight with you, and in practice it doesn’t cause problems for others. Then for those who understand this, they will help us.  So it (planting trees) has a strong energy.  Every path to regeneration is good, but I have chosen trees as my principal path.”

M C:  Why do you think we as humans have come to where we are now destroying our planet and ourselves?

P K D:  “If we look at this from the view of religion, the core of all religions, whether Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam, is good and beautiful, but we have gone astray due to our greed and desires, and this has built up as we have not managed or controlled this greed.  Even from birth we enter the world already with desire, wanting this and that. But we haven’t asked the question of why and to what purpose we are born from the beginning.  When we are born these tendencies are still weak, but then they are reinforced and effectively programmed into us like AI programming.  When we cry we are fed or given candy or snacks, we are bathed, we are clothed.  We remember all of this. We learn- This is what studying is, this is what teaching is.  Work and by working we receive money.  Then we use money to buy what we need in our lives. – This is all programmed into us.  We never escape from our shell, our cocoon.   We become thickly wrapped in all of this programming.  We never have time to learn what is real and what is fake.  From our first minute of life we are programmed and pushed. Then soon we find ourselves so thickly covered in this while we are still an immature worm inside that we cannot free ourselves from this bind.  From here we start to destroy everything.  We cut down trees without any thought that this wrong.  Policies and laws provide concessions to convert forests into timber. The rules we write ourselves, by those who cut the trees, use the timber, and sell the concessions.  The forestry department provides license to cut the trees down even though they didn’t plant any of the trees.  All of this is legal.  The laws are the regulations of the world.   This is not correct in the true sense, but it is correct in line with development plans and such.  We start to measure in terms of development plans and objectives and there we have strayed.

            We need to act on our own level such as Michael you plant and grow trees and others can see what happens and the benefits 5 years, 10 years, 20 years later and come to understand and this spreads, teaching by example.  People can see what will happen.

            What is most frightening now is so many people do not see the future.  Our political leadership does not see the future.  4, 5 years 10 years into the future no one knows what it will be like.  But for me, I see clearly.  If I plant trees, if I grow rice, if I grow a diversity of crops, I know what this will bring.  I know if I plant 20 forest trees what they will be like in 20 years, 30 years, 50 years.  If I grow Hopea odorata, Dipterocarpus alatus, what they will be like.  I know about the soil fertility that will be built, the frogs, crabs, fish and other creatures that will come, the mushrooms that will grow.

            Why don’t we do what we know?  Why do we go where we only can guess?  The world is so large and we cannot easily manage and support at this level, but we can create small worlds where we can restore and regenerate on the size and scale we can manage.   If this can happen in a small place such as one person’s or family’s land, then this is an example and has the seeds and seedlings to spread. I don’t believe this can change from policy or funding, but from more and more people who create small worlds of abundance and are examples of this in practice.  COVID has actually made this much more clear for many here, forcing people to think and see differently.   From this it can change, but not in just one lifetime, it may take 2 or more lifetimes to fully manifest.  In Buriram we have set a policy that in 300 years we will be the most pleasant community to live in in this world.  8 years have passed and we have 292 years left to realize this.  “Fertile and abundant, secure, wealthy and sustainable”…

            This was also proposed in the 12th national development plan, but then they removed “อุดมสมบูรณ์” (fertile and abundant), …. and this is the heart and basis for all the rest, so it is likely we will end up with corruption that is secure, wealthy and sustainable.”

M.C: Is there a name you use to call your system of practice and or philosophy?

P K D:  “The name that is closest and which I am most famous for is as the person who first developed Natural Farming here in Thailand. …. There are these words that Masanobu Fukuoka said to me which I hold closely, “Natural Farming is not the planting or harvesting of crops, but rather it is a tool to plant our spirit of humanity to be more perfect.”  When humans are as perfect as they can be they will understand the world, understand nature, and understand the environment, and they will live with nature and the environment without any problems; nor will they have problems with other humans or all that is valuable in this world.”

M C:  It sounds like Fukuoka connected with you and your way of thinking?

P K D:   “Yes we talked together and stayed together many days, traveling some days together with an interpreter and they took videos of us 2 talking together…  I took a lot away from that trip….  We traveled together during his whole visit to Thailand going to Yasothorn, to Tung Kula, and all the other places chosen for that trip. We lodged together, and conversed together. It touched me as he was the only person that understood what I was saying, which I could see and feel in his response. We spoke the same language.  But when I would try to explain things elsewhere, I didn’t know if I was wasting my time.”

Photo credit: Por Kham Deuang Pasee

Epilogue

            While I had long heard of Por Kham Deuang, being one of the early leaders and movers in the then developing sustainable farming movement in Thailand, it was only last December that I had the chance to get to meet and exchange with him over a couple of days together in Hat Yai.  His wisdom and clarity was good medicine that helped to draw me in deeper.   While at that time I had no recorder beyond my attentive brain, key messages sank in and took root.

            A key phrase of his was “Don’t practice a profession, but do your role in life.”   And for him, which was common to my own thought process and ideas, the human role on this planet is to garden.   To help select and move seeds around to create more abundance for the benefit of humans and all beings, and when we just do our simple role to help in a small way to care for nature we don’t have to work hard (as nature’s abundance cares for us).

            Then he also explained how we think far too short-sightedly.   Many do not want to plant trees as it may be 30 years or more for them to mature.  But he sees that we inherit that which the generations before have passed on and we are here very temporarily and if we live good and well we will pass on a richer land and inheritance to our children, grandchildren and so forth.   So in this timeline even if we plant trees at 90 years of age, we are connected to them and the air they may help fill with oxygen centuries later, as we inherit the topsoil, the biodiversity, the foods and medicines from our planet and ancestors.

            This helped me see life more clearly; how I am connected to many generations back in time and many generations forward in time and within this scope during the limited short time of my existence I have a chance to do my role and if I do it well I help pass on more to the future while I can thank all those who came before.

            In Thailand we are blessed to have a number of farmers, traditional doctors, and community activists who have been leading in vision, wisdom and practice to heal our land, our planet and ourselves.  I am even more fortunate be close to some of these wise elders and youngers and to be able to carry on with my wife and family from such lineage.   While I think this must be true everywhere where there remains culture and relationship to the land, when we look at “regeneration” we do not need to look far.  Elders such a Por Kham Deaung have seen and see the whole picture from how we erred, where this started, and how we can go back to heal our planet and ourselves.  They see and know this from the land, culture and traditions of their ancestors from many generations back and they live seeing forward to many generations into the future.   Por Kham Deuang said that the seed of change and restoration is within ourselves.  He said we need to completely change our way of thinking even our structure of thinking to take us to the objectives we seek.   I am happy to share a bit of Por Kham Deuang’s medicine.  Por Kham Deuang invited me to share and translate his learnings so these seeds may find fertile soil far and wide.  While Por Kham Deuang has planted 1000’s of trees and from these trees many 1000’s more seedlings have been distributed and planted far and wide, perhaps the greatest gift he has planted are these seeds of truth and clarity about our role and potential in this world during our short lives.

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