Tag Archive for: Regenerative Agriculture

Monthly Newsletter – Vía Orgánica

For organic regenerative agriculture, fair trade,
social justice, sustainable living and sustainable production 

Ranch news

REGENERATIVE FARM

Education and Youth

The Vía Orgánica Ranch has become a living school. Enriching and formative experiences are generated daily, not only for the people who come to visit but also for the team that collaborates on the project. In particular for young people who currently work and learn in this space. 

We have a very varied group of young people who participate in the project: from 17-year-old girls and boys to students from different universities doing their internships. This mix of young people creates mutual inspiration and learning for life. Several boys and girls work in the maguey plantation, in the production of vegetables gardens, in the management of farm animals, in the production of fodder and organic fertilizers. 

Thanks to these experiences, some have started their garden at home, doing layering, others have been encouraged to study agriculture or biology and careers related to the environment. In this way they will spread this enthusiasm and love for the environment to young people in their communities. 

The young women of Vía Orgánica are a fundamental part of the project and their collective participation, creativity and energy make them environmental leaders. United to generate solutions from the Jalpa Valley and the eight surrounding communities. 

Activism

The Mexican Government issued and published a new presidential decree to revoke and no longer grant authorizations for the use of genetically modified corn, specifically in products intended for human consumption, as well as the use of the herbicide glyphosate, with a gradual transition. This in response to pressure on the first provision in this regard issued in 2020.

Mercedes López, director of the Asociación de Consumidores Orgánicos, Vía Orgánica in CDMX, and Regeneration International, spoke about the fight that is being done to prohibit the use of transgenic corn in Mexico. We invite you to watch the interview here.

Photo by: Matin Buen Viaje

Our member of Vía Orgánica, Diana Hoogesteger, visited and interviewed Mario Pedraza, in the Sierra Gorda of Querétaro, where she had the opportunity to see how this ranch called Suelo Vivo practices regenerative livestock, because that is the result. We invite you to read the interview by clicking here.

Packages

This year come and visit for the first time or return to the Agroecological Park project in the Jalpa Valley in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. Put together your package: you can include delicious foods with nixtamalized corn tortillas and fresh, colorful salads from the garden. Experience a guided tour visiting all areas of the ranch and learn how the farm works. You can choose to stay in one of our adobe cabins and end the day with a campfire in the gazebo, at the top of the ranch.

Every weekend we have activities for children where they can plant, feed the animals and even harvest their greens for salad. 

This month come and take a look at our store and discover the variety of delicious and healthy products available. We have seeds and plants for sale so that you can grow too! Then go to the restaurant and try any dish with nixtamalized corn tortillas, a green juice and some fresh greens that will make your day. 

Remember that your visit supports environmental education and care for the planet. 

Billion Agave Project

Infographics

Seasonal Crops

Store and Restaurant

In the store we have a wide variety of products from the basic basket, fruits and vegetables, cheese, salad, cereals and even processed foods ready to heat when you get home. Thanks to the supply of products in the store, it has been possible to maintain a network of producers who have made their way with other stores, restaurants and various consumers. Meet our producers! Click here to see a list .

Our Vía Orgánica restaurant offers delicious local, natural and organic dishes. It is located inside the Agrecology Park, on the way to Jalpa. It has a menu  “from farm to table” which raises awareness from the palate about the origin of our food, the methods or techniques used in its production and about the people behind the products: teachers, meteorologists, ecologists, guardians, whose purpose is to produce food taking care of the earth. 

We are here to serve you both in the store and in the restaurant daily from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm.

Ranch Recipe

ORGANIC SALAD

Ingredients

– 2 cups mixed lettuce leaves
– 2 cups baby arugula
– 2 cups spinach
– 1/4 cup kale leaves
– 1 bunch of baby carrots (precooked and roasted)
– 1/4 cup precooked and roasted beets
– 1/2 cup roasted cauliflower
– 1/4 cup honey ginger dressing
– Sea salt
– Pepper

Preparation

Cut the leaves from your garden, wash and drain, chop the leaves the size of a bite. Mix the leaves in a bowl with the other vegetables, add the dressing and incorporate well. 

Add a pinch of sea salt and a pinch of pepper. Enjoy your crunchy salad at home or we’ll wait for you at our restaurant to try this or other salads and delicious dishes. 

Meet Our Producers

 Seasonal Chile Producers of Dolores Hidalgo’s Producers of the Seasonal Chile

This group of women and families produce a wide variety of seasonal chili peppers in some communities of Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato. They start their seedlings from winter taking care of the seedlings until there is no danger of frost. They go out in the fields and behind their house to grow various types of chili peppers, from ancho, seco, mulato, and the famous chile de agua, which is delicious stuffed with cheese or roasted in slices. 

Find their products in the Vía Orgánica store and in the restaurant’s dishes. 

Inspirations

March 22: World Water Day World Water

World Water Day is celebrated every March 22 with the aim of drawing attention to its importance and also to defend the sustainable management of water resources. For this reason, this year 2023 the motto is “The importance of water”, as a premise to remember the relevance of fresh water to which about 2,200 million people still cannot access.  

We recommend the documentary Mission Blue available on Netflix, which tells the story of oceanographer Sylvia Earle as she travels the globe on an urgent mission to highlight the dire state of Earth’s oceans. 

March Activities

April Activities

EVERY FRIDAY WE TAKE YOU TO THE VÍA ORGÁNICA RANCH!

*Includes transportation, food, mini tour of the orchard, and demonstration of making tamales. 

RESERVE ON THE FOLLOWING PHONES: 

Office: 442 757 0441
Whatsapp: 415 151 4978 

DON’T FORGET TO VISIT US!

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

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Regenerative Agriculture: Key to Solving the Climate Crisis

Meet Gabe Brown. If you haven’t read his groundbreaking book Dirt To Soil, visited his North Dakota farm, seen his Netflix documentary Kiss The Ground, or his Congressional testimony, you can find Gabe speaking around the country about regenerative farming.

Brown describes how regenerative agriculture not only fixes farming, but also the farming business model. It delivers more nutritious food, healthier rural culture, and enables smallholder farmers worldwide to feed themselves and the rest of us. It’s also essential if we want to solve the climate crisis.

“Regen ag,” as it’s called, enables farmers and ranchers to sequester enormous amounts of carbon in the soil — and at a profit. If farmers around the world adopt the practice, it will start to roll climate change backward. Couple that with renewable energy, and it solves the climate crisis.

KEEP READING ON CLIMATE AND CAPITAL MEDIA

Latin America’s Food Paradox

The most biodiverse region on the planet, Latin America is an agroindustrial superpower that exports fully one fourth of its total production. By contrast, another agricultural superpower, Asia, exports only 6 percent of its production. Still Latin America has never succeeded in tapping into its agricultural wealth to adequately feed its population. At the moment, at least six countries in the region are in the throes of a food crisis, with nearly 268 million Latin Americans currently feeling the effects of food insecurity, with many millions more sure to join their ranks in the coming months.

Despite all that, Latin America also gives us reasons for hope. It is the birthplace of major breakthroughs in the fight against ultra-processed foods, with Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia adopting clear warning labels for these harmful products. Mexico has been working to prioritize and scale-up agroecology—an ecosystemic alternative model to industrial agriculture that is heralded as improving not only the lives of small-scale farmers and their families, but also having a positive effect on biodiversity, the environment and nutrition.

KEEP READING ON FOOD TANK

 

 

With “regenerative” Farming, Small Growers Can Reap Big Profits for Air and Soil

Mollie Engelhart’s Sow a Heart Farm in Fillmore, a town northwest of Los Angeles, doesn’t look anything like the orderly farms next door. Between the avocado trees are messy mixes of peppers, garlic, broccoli and cauliflower. But everything is planted somewhere for a reason.

“Fennel is actually an insectary. So the fennel is keeping the bugs off of the kale without spraying any pesticides or anything,” Engelhart said.

Recently harvested plots are patrolled by chickens and sheep, which eat the scraps, churn the dirt and poop out fresh fertilizer. This makes for healthier food and healthier soil.

Engelhart’s method of farming is some of the best carbon-capture technology around. It’s called regenerative agriculture, and it’s still far from the norm, but some farmers are using it to grow more sustainably. Environmentalists hope it will get some support in this year’s version of the farm bill — the legislation that determines the fate of farming livelihoods in the U.S.

KEEP READING ON MARKETPLACE

Maximizing Photosynthesis and Root Exudates through Regenerative Agriculture to Increase Soil Organic Carbon to Mitigate Climate Change

To shift from a significant emitter to a major mitigator of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, agriculture needs to change from the current dominant paradigm of chemically intensive, industrial/conventional systems to regenerative systems by focusing on plant biology and living soil sciences. Maximizing photosynthesis to capture and convert atmospheric CO2 into organic molecules to store as soil organic carbon (SOC) would be an effective carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technology to mitigate climate change.

The world reached 420 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere in May 2022. The Global Carbon Budget report estimated that atmospheric CO2 reached an annual average of 417.2 ppm in 2022.

Evidence shows that 430 ppm carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2eq) to limit warming to 1.5°C and 450 ppm CO2eq to limit warming to 2°C have been exceeded. Reducing emissions and transitioning to renewable energy is no longer sufficient to stop temperatures from exceeding 2oC, the higher limit of the Paris Agreement. Negative emissions are needed to remove the legacy levels of CO2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that without additional sequestration, global mean surface temperature will increase in 2100 between 3.7°C and 4.8°C higher than pre-industrial levels. The IPPC states that CDR is essential in limiting global warming to 1.5°C to achieve net negative emissions. It advocated for CDR technologies such as regenerating natural ecosystems, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and soil carbon sequestration (SCS).

Regenerative agriculture is based on a range of food and farming systems that maximize the photosynthesis of plants to capture CO2 and use organic matter biomass and root exudates to store it as SOC. It can be applied to all agricultural sectors, including cropping, grazing, and perennial horticulture. Meta-reviews and other published studies have found that transitioning to regenerative agriculture systems can result in more sequestration than emissions from agriculture, turning agriculture from a significant emitter to a major mitigator of GHG emissions.

Scaling up 10% of various best practice regenerative agriculture systems is realistic, achievable, and low-cost. Just a percentage of innovators and early adopters applying best practice regenerative systems to their land holdings can significantly contribute to achieving the negative emissions needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C higher than pre-industrial levels.

READ THE FULL PAPER HERE

The Organic Sector Must Respond to Regenerative Momentum

“Regenerative” has momentum. New partnerships, organizations, finance tools and certifications pop up daily. Those of us who have been working to promote regenerative organic practices for decades — including the organic pioneers at Rodale Institute who coined the term “regenerative agriculture” in the 80s — can rejoice. All newcomers focusing on soil regeneration, biodiversity and climate: Welcome!

But let’s distinguish between serious regenerative actors, like farmer allies working for practices and policies similar to those we work for in IFOAM… and those like Syngenta, where the ill-defined “Regen Ag” allows Syngenta to re-brand itself as a “regenerative” champion while continuing with pesticides as core business.

Regenerative momentum is partly explained by this attractive, easily exploited ambiguity. Claiming regenerative goals and practices also helps delay the more ambitious political steps needed to address crises in food security, climate and loss of biodiversity. Regeneration also just feels right. The craftsmanship appeals to farmers.

KEEP READING ON BIOECO ACTUAL

Tendencias en Alimentos 2023: ¿Qué y cómo comeremos en el futuro?

El estudio de las tendencias alimentarias son herramientas útiles para comprender el cambio social y proporcionan orientación cuando los hábitos comportamentales de los consumidores sorprenden al mercado con nuevas necesidades y expectativas.

En este sentido, actualmente se pueden observar tres tendencias alimentarias con especial fuerza:

1. Nuevo “GLOcal” (Global+Local)

La pandemia ha tenido un costo masivo en el comercio mundial y las cadenas de suministro “justo a tiempo”, alimentando aún más las críticas al abastecimiento global que los activistas climáticos, han estado haciendo durante algún tiempo.

La tendencia alimentaria ha logrado dinamismo debido a la guerra, reflejando el deseo de una relación nueva y más significativa entre los alimentos producidos localmente y los importados a nivel mundial, que se convertirá en el criterio de aceptación para la industria alimentaria.

“New Glocal” no solo tiene en cuenta aspectos locales y globales, sino también crea una nueva jerarquía.

SEGUIR LEYENDO EN PARQUE TECNOLÓGICO ITAIPÚ

Our Global Regeneration Revolution: Organic 3.0 to Regenerative and Organic Agriculture

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

Regeneration is a Global Revolution

Hardly anyone had heard of regenerative agriculture before 2014. Now it is in the news everyday 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, at a meeting in the Rodale headquarters. 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. It was a truly global and inclusive start.

The meeting agreed to form Regeneration International to promote a holistic concept of regeneration. The following consensus 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.

Organic 3.0 the third phase of the Organic sector

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 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, as seen in the following diagram.

Move 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 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, on the basis 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 environmental, social, and economic 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.

The Hijacking of Organic 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 and allowing inappropriate plowing methods were raised as major criticisms.

The organic pioneers started concept of soil health. 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 check this – if ever 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 for certified organic systems.

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, that 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.

Dealing with 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 buzz word 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 it 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. They need to be seen as part of an ongoing process to become fully regenerative.

There are also corporations that are rebranding their herbicide sprayed GMO no-till systems as regenerative. These corporations and systems are being called out as Degenerative because they are not Regenerative.

The Concept of Degeneration to call out Greenwashing

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.

Regenerative and Organic based on Agroecology – the path forward

From the perspective 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 focus on Regenerative Agriculture?

The majority of the world’s population are directly or indirectly dependant 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%, 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.

Why focus on the Soil and Soil Organic Matter?

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 soil 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.

Regenerating our Degenerated Planet and Societies – Our 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.

We must reverse the Climate Crisis, Migration Crisis, Biodiversity Crisis, Health Crisis, Food Crisis, Gender Crisis, Media Crisis, War Crisis, Land Grabbing Crisis, Racism Crisis, Democracy Crisis and Planetary Boundary Crisis so that we can regenerate our planet and our descendants can have a better and fairer world.

The vast majority of the destruction of biodiversity, the greenhouse gases, pesticides, endocrine disrupters, plastics, poverty, hunger, 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, participation, inclusion 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.”

 

Andre Leu is the International Director for Regeneration International. To sign up for RI’s email newsletter, click here.

Monthly Newsletter – Vía Orgánica

For organic regenerative agriculture, fair trade,
social justice, sustainable living and sustainable production 

Ranch news

REGENERATIVE FARM

Poultry

Poultry start their day along with the first rays of the sun at the Regenerative Farm, a diversified model where they live in open-air paddock spaces with extensive land to explore. Their diet is complemented with a mixture of local grains, maguey fodder, wheat sprouts, and insects: mainly grasshoppers, larvae, and June beetle larvae that they find in their pastures. The olive trees, blackberries, mesquites with some agaves and nopales that have recently been included offer shade and a bit of protection from some predators. On one hand, the grasslands that have already been established as a vegetal cover green up in the rains and provide food, fodder, protection, reduce erosion, store water; in the dry season they function as dry cover and also as dry hay that is used as a base layer in the hens’ bedrooms to absorb moisture from their manure. In the end, this material is recycled through compost or bocashi and is reincorporated into the fertilization of trees and other plant species. 

During the winter, the chickens take shelter at night in two sheds and in our two spacious paddocks where they fly around, and when their doors open in the morning they rush out wanting to reach the sun’s rays. This system generates various products such as eggs, meat, fruits, stalks for fodder, biomass, seeds and a microbiological diversity that interacts and remains alive under the cover. 
In this season you can observe the brown colors of the vegetation after the rains have receded but during this season, corn, sunflower and even squash are planted, which are part of the grazing areas and the chickens are in charge of weeding and reducing the grasshoppers’ populations that also arrive with the humidity of the season.

The hens’ management is preventive, the spaces where they sleep are sanitized with vinegar, lime and microorganisms. In their drinking water, a bark of palo dulce is placed, a native tree that keeps its digestive tract clean and prevents infections; homeopathy is also used, and their food made up of local grains, maguey fodder, wheat sprouts and their daily grazing from sunrise to sunset keeps them healthy.
Can you imagine being a poultry and living on this farm? 
These are happy chickens!

Lourdes Guerrero is in charge of this farm and a neighbor of the community. She and her support team are in charge of keeping the farm in action; now they have added a space for the production of rabbits, which we will talk about in another newsletter. Animals can be part of soil regeneration and allies in landscape recovery. 
Visit the regenerative farm and eat free-range meat and eggs!

Packages

This year visit for the first time or return to the Agroecology Park project in the Jalpa Valley in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. Make your own package: you can include delicious food with nixtamalized corn tortillas and fresh, live salads straight from the garden. Experience a guided tour visiting all the areas of the ranch and learn how the farm works. You can choose to stay in one of our adobe cabins and end the day with a campfire at the lookout.

Every weekend we’ve got activities for children where they can plant, feed the animals and even harvest their greens for salad.

This month try a unique experience, explore the regenerative farm and get your free grazing eggs; get to know the new rabbit area and take a photo of our beautiful mural at the end of the regenerative farm.
Remember that your visit supports environmental education and care for the planet. 

Billion Agave Project

How to make layers of mesquite trees


Seasonal Crop

Meet Our Producers

Simón Moreno
Producer of vegetables all year round, Simón also owns a cow barn and has been one of the most constant producers in the rescue of heirloom seeds, obtaining a diversity of tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, sweet potatoes and other vegetables. He is one of the first producers to join the organic flea market, a local, rural market, and now supplies to several local stores that already know him; he has kept his commitment to farming in an organic way and improving his soil health. We appreciate his work and invite you to purchase his products at the store located at Vía Orgánica’s entrance.
Thanks to Don Simón we have healthy food and he is an inspiration for the new generations. 

Inspirations

February 2: World Wetlands Day 
Wetlands are transition zones where water connects to land, areas that remain temporarily or permanently flooded. Wetlands are vital for human survival and are among the most diverse and productive ecosystems: they are the cradle of biological diversity, sources of water and primary productivity on which countless plant and animal species depend for their lives. We share this chapter 6 of the series “VIVO MÉXICO”. Tour of the most important Mexican wetlands explaining their ecology; structure and function. Made by Roberto Ruiz Vidal. 

February Activities

March Activities

Every Friday we’ve got transportation to Vía Orgánica 

*Includes transportation, food, mini tour of the orchard, and demonstration of making tamales. 

RESERVE ON THE FOLLOWING PHONES: 

Office: 44 2757 0441
Whatsapp: 41 5151 4978 

DON’T FORGET TO VISIT US!

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

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Agricultura Regenerativa: transición a una gestión ecosistémica de la agricultura

La agricultura pasa por tiempos de gran complejidad, enfrenta grandes retos, ante la preocupación por la seguridad alimentaria, la necesidad de prevenir la degradación ambiental y mejorar las condiciones de la tierra para la producción agrícola, así como condiciones climatológicas adversa, escases o ineficiencia en el uso del agua, complicaciones en la cadena de suministro, etc. Estas condiciones generan la necesidad de enfoques nuevos e innovadores para la producción agroalimentaria sostenible. El objetivo ya no es simplemente maximizar la productividad, sino optimizar en un panorama mucho más complejo de interacción entre la producción, las condiciones ambientales y la justicia social.

Por las últimas décadas se han llevado a cabo iniciativas para cambiar prácticas agrícolas a una producción menos dañina al medioambiente. Por ejemplo, el término agricultura sustentable se refiere a prácticas agrícolas que buscan producir cantidades adecuadas de alimentos, de alta calidad, a la vez que son rentables y ambientalmente seguras.

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Tag Archive for: Regenerative Agriculture

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