Author: James Nason | Published: December 9, 2016
One question more than any other is directed at CarbonLink’s Terry McCosker by producers wanting know more about on-farm carbon storing projects. Is there any money in it?
Author: Nancy Zamierowski | Published: December 10, 2016
The concept of “regeneration” is often used in conversation around social impact, finance models and agriculture, but what does it really mean? In this series Yellow Seed will explore: 1) what are useful ways to define and think about the concept? and 2) how can theory be translated into action and practice? We will delve into the concept of regeneration through real stories from the cacao industry, from producer, to supplier, to consumer. We intend to spark a deeper conversation about meaningful impact and the work we can do together to improve the system. We begin by getting a first-hand look into a pioneering cacao cooperative in Ecuador that is putting regeneration-based agriculture to the test.
“When you go into the plantation, you wouldn’t know it’s actually a farm. It looks and feels just like a tropical forest,” described Daniel Korson of Coracao Confections in Oakland, California. His search to find a sourcing partner that mirrored Coracao’s values of transparency and ecological conservation took him to Esmeraldas, Ecuador where a regenerative cacao farm is set in the lush Ecuadorian jungle. The farm is part of a producer co-operative called Eco Cacao, co-founded in 2006 by George Fletcher and the Ecuadorian permaculture and Seed Guardians Community (www.redsemillas.org), a grassroots network that works with communities to preserve the bio-cultural diversity of the Ecuador. Gregory Landau, CEO of Terra Genesis International and founder of Nova Chocolate, began collaborating with Eco Cacao in 2006 with a strong vision: to support the local community in evolving their agricultural practices towards regenerative growing, and to create practices that also conserve the local Chocóan rainforest, an area of immense biodiversity. Now, Eco Cacao works to empower 80 farmers on 320 hectares dispersed across the Galera-San Francisco Peninsula, many of whom specialize in unique, high-quality heirloom varietals. Eco Cacao is part of a larger cooperative (UOPROCAE) which has a total of 1600 hectares.
In the past 5 years, direct, responsible sourcing has become increasingly important. Serendipity led Daniel to meet Gregory Landua at a conference, who then invited him to visit one of their farms. “Eco Cacao is leading the way in terms of walking their talk and being fully transparent. As an ambassador of cacao to my community, I want to know exactly how the cacao is grown and processed, the details of the farm and management, and how the producers and the environment are being treated. Eco Cacao makes it easy to share and amplify that story.” However, Daniel confessed that direct sourcing has not always been that simple. “After, being in the industry for 8 years, there are people who say they are doing their best, but often times they will not let you see ‘what’s behind the curtain.’”
On his visit, Daniel followed Gregory through the cacao-filled forest, “As we were walking, Gregory was chopping down brush with his machete to find the trail. As it fell to the ground, he would point out which species preserved nitrogen and which fertilized the soil. The forest was so loud with different bugs and birds. It is really a refuge for biodiversity.” As part of their business practices, Eco Cacao’s producers actively engage in restoring damaged landscapes; adding functional biodiversity, providing wildlife habitats, improving water cycles and creating conservation corridors where animals and plant life can flourish. In this holistic approach to regeneration, humans actually work for, not against, the natural landscape. Creativity and design ingenuity are able to “do good” and help renew local ecology. “Eco Cacao is the only cacao farm I’ve visited that is doing farming in a way that is not only preserving nature, but also steadily improving the natural environment,” says Daniel.
Author: Judith D. Schwartz | Published: December 7, 2016
We often think of water as a “noun”, as something bounded by place. After researching and writing a book on water, however, I’ve come to regard water as a “verb”. Water is always in motion. It expands in volume or retrenches; it retains or releases energy. It changes state, moving from gas to liquid to solid and back again, in an ongoing dialogue with land and sun.
This is not just to fuss over language. Rather, I believe that understanding how water “works”—how it moves across the landscape and through the atmosphere—is essential to truly address our many water challenges. This is so whether we’re contending with scarcity, in the case of drought, or too much water, as in floods. And because the workings of water intersect with factors like climate, biodiversity and food security, we can better grapple with other significant global problems by zeroing in on water processes.
Let’s take a quick look at three ways that water moves:
Infiltration In a functioning landscape, rain is held in the ground and supports plant and microbial life or slowly filters into groundwater stores. Our water “infrastructure” here is soil, and the richer the better: every one percent increase in soil organic matter (mostly carbon) represents an additional 20,000 gallons of water per acre held in the ground. This means it’s a lot harder to make a flood, and the longer the ground stays moist between rains.
What we perceive as a “lack of water” problem is often an “inability to keep water in the ground” problem—itself a symptom of carbon-depleted soil. As Precious Phiri, a land management consultant based in Zimbabwe and Africa Coordinator for Regeneration International, says, “there are places where you will be in a drought no matter how much rain you get.” Simple approaches to building soil carbon, such as managed animal impact, can make a tremendous difference in food security. Jody Butterfield, co-founder of the Africa Centre for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe, says increased water infiltration in animal-treated fields can mean the ability to grow food for seven months rather than merely two—the difference between being self-sufficient and relying on food aid.
Author: Lori Wright | Published: December 5, 2016
Healthy soil is rich in organic matter, but scientists have yet to fully understand exactly how that organic matter is formed. Now a team of University of New Hampshire scientists have uncovered evidence that microbial pathways – not plants – are the chief originator of the organic matter found in stable soil carbon pools.
The new insight provides promise for designing agricultural systems that promote microbial communities to optimize soil organic matter formation.
The research was conducted by Cynthia Kallenbach, former UNH graduate student now at Colorado State University, her advisor, Stuart Grandy, associate professor of natural resources at UNH, and Serita Frey, professor of natural resources at UNH. Their results were published in the paper “Direct evidence for microbial-derived soil organic matter formation and its ecophysiological controls” in the journal Nature Communications, and comes from work supported by the NH Agricultural Experiment Station.
In the paper, UNH scientists suggest that soil organic matter accumulates from inputs of dead microbial cells and microbial byproducts formed when microbes eat plant roots and residues, rather than from plants themselves, as previously thought.
In the past, scientists thought the best way to build soil organic matter was to slow down or inhibit decomposition using plants that soil microbes find difficult to decompose. The idea was that the undecomposed plant parts would gradually become soil organic matter, especially if the soil microbial community was inactive.
Author: Peter Holmgren | Published on: November 30, 2016
The Paris Agreement and The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out a raft of new and challenging global targets for people, the environment, business and development. SDG 13 directly embeds the climate change challenge in the framework. In other words, the global community has explicitly linked its broad development agenda and the climate agenda, clarifying that climate benefits must be part of our investments in the future of humanity.
For forestry, some linkages are explicit, such as SDG 15 concerning the sustainable management of forests, which relates to Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+); and SDG 12, covering corporate responsibility, sustainable consumption and production. At CIFOR, we have concluded in our new strategy that forestry links to all 17 SDGs. This way, we emphasise the essential contributions that forests and trees make to all aspects of sustainable development, including the climate change challenge.
Countries set out their plans for post-Paris Agreement action in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Analysis of the 158 INDCs submitted to the UNFCCC prior to COP21 shows that there is a significant gap between the contributions proposed and the emission reductions needed (https://climateactiontracker.org). Even if countries fully implement their INDCs, the world may experience warming of 2.7-3.0°C, therefore countries need to notably elevate the ambitions set out in their INDCs if we are to avoid disastrous climate change.
Forestry, agriculture and landscapes may offer significant additional mitigation or removal opportunities beyond the options elaborated in the negotiations and INDCs.
More importantly, it is clear that improving resilience and reducing vulnerability – the third pillar of the Paris Agreement – by and large means safeguarding the natural production systems on which we depend for food, ecosystem services and economic development. This clearly reflects the sustainable development aspiration of the Paris Agreement and illustrates the important context of the climate change challenge.
Approximately 20-24 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to forestry, agriculture and landscapes. Clearly, better management of the world’s landscapes has a key role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, most INDCs do not comprehensively include agriculture and forestry in their mitigation targets. A recent study of INDCs in seven countries in Asia, to which CIFOR contributed, found that only two countries include both agriculture and forestry mitigation targets and measures in their INDCs.
Looking beyond the mitigation of emissions, the world’s landscapes have great potential to act as carbon sinks by increasing stocks held in vegetation and soils. INDCs are generally not exploring these potentials at the moment, and more research into the biological and socioeconomic potential is needed.
Even where forestry and agriculture are included in INDCs and national plans, it is unclear how contributions from these sectors will be achieved. Insufficient international support in the form of finance, technology transfer and capacity building hinder many countries’ abilities to implement the adaptation and mitigation measures outlined in their INDCs in agriculture, forestry and other land-use sectors.
Author: José Graziano da Silva | Published: November 30, 2016
Climate change is already having an impact on agriculture, and the implications for food security are alarming. They highlight the urgent need to support smallholders in adapting to the challenges the whole world faces. Farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk and community foresters all depend on activities that are intimately and inextricably linked to climate. Their livelihoods are thus the most vulnerable to climate change. They will require far greater access to technologies, markets, information and credit for investment to adjust their production systems and practices to climate change.
Action must be taken now to make agriculture more sustainable, productive and resilient. Otherwise, the impacts of climate change will seriously compromise food production in countries and regions that are already highly food-insecure – and jeopardise progress towards the key Sustainable Development Goals of ending hunger and poverty by 2030. We cannot let that happen, especially as the negative impacts on agriculture will be even more widespread after 2030.
Through its effects on agriculture, livelihoods and infrastructure, climate change threatens all dimensions of food security. It will expose both urban and rural poor to higher and more volatile food prices. It will also affect food availability by reducing the productivity of crops, livestock and fisheries, and hinder access to food by disrupting the livelihoods of millions of rural people who depend on agriculture for their incomes.
Hunger, poverty and climate change need to be tackled together. This is, not least, a moral imperative as those who are now suffering most have contributed least to the changing climate.
FAO’s new State of Food and Agriculture 2016 report describes ways of adapting smallholder production to climate change and making the livelihoods of rural populations more resilient. Diversification and better integration of food production systems into complex ecological processes create synergies with the natural habitat instead of depleting natural resources. Agroecology and sustainable intensification are examples of approaches that improve yields and build resilience through practices such as green manuring, nitrogen-fixing cover crops and sustainable soil management, and integration with agroforestry and animal production.
More resilient agriculture sectors and intelligent investments in smallholder farmers can deliver transformative change, enhancing the prospects and incomes of the world’s poorest while buffering them against the impacts of climate change.
Author: John King | Published: November 22, 2016
Gabe Brown from North Dakota is one of the most influential farmers in the developed world. Insights from his property are inspiring commercial farmers to understand soil health from a whole new perspective and scientists are catching on to his success.
Brown recently visited Australia to rub shoulders with communities of farmers pioneering low input farming and looking to enjoy benefits of greater profits and less stress. His message is simple: To change what you do on-farm, make little changes; to change what you see on-farm, make big changes.
Sustainability as seen by most agronomists and policy makers simply means to sustain a degraded resource like soil. As Brown argues, unless soil is regenerating there is little hope for farmers and their communities to improve water quality. Right now US farmers are being sued by cities for contaminating drinking water with nitrogen.
Three things made Brown question industry advice: Four years of no income from drought and hail; pioneering soil scientists pointing out how agrichemicals degrade soil function; being a keen observer of native prairie grasslands.
His cash crops now yield 25 per cent above his county average without any inputs except very occasional herbicide and he is looking to cut that completely, too.
Now scientists, and even National Geographic magazine, are banging on his door to study how soils are improving on his 2000-hectare property. Their studies find increasing NPK and organic carbon despite no inputs used. To anybody looking in, it’s not just his use of cover crops which is eliminating fertiliser use.
Brown promotes five keys to soil health. The first is least amount of soil disturbance possible, preferably no-till.
Author: Marco Marzano de Marinis | Published: November 21, 2016
What if one of the planet’s secret weapons in the fight against climate change was all around us?
What if every country had it in abundance, and it could also be used at the same time to give a better life to those most in need?
Too good to be true?
Most of us might guess that the answer lies in clean energy, car-pooling or ramping up recycling only – but then you would be missing a big opportunity that’s literally right under our feet: soil.
With COP22 under way after entry into force of the Paris climate deal last Friday, focusing on soil could help us move from having a clear target to making actionable progress for the development of a sustainable agricultural sector, worldwide.
The intersection between climate change and agriculture is crucial to understanding the key role farmers play in mitigating climate change.
Soil is one of a farmer’s greatest assets. It is a critical component of the farming system, making a vital contribution to food security, effective water and energy utilization. An efficient use of soil can deliver multiple benefits in addition to mitigating climate change effects.
Some estimates suggest soil can store up to 1,000 kgs of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide per hectare of land. In a process known as carbon sequestration, plants “breathe” in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), and store it via their roots in the ground, as soil organic carbon. This game-changing approach could offset up to 15% of global fossil-fuel emissions, complementing crucial efforts to decarbonise the energy and transport sectors.
And it’s not just carbon sequestration that makes soil such an important ally in the fight against climate change.
Healthy soils are the basis of more productive food and agricultural systems, which are needed to meet the increasing demand for food from a growing world population, and to boost world food security and nutrition. High priority must be given to producing more sustainable and high quality food, fostering efficiency, and ensuring farmer gains, as well as strengthening economic growth, particularly in rural and remote areas. These are the critical catalysers to tackling climate change while achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
So it is clear that by keeping our soils healthy, we’ll be play our part in combatting global warming while scaling-up healthier food systems and nutrition for all.
Published: November 28, 2016
Agroforestry has a key role to play in helping the world adopt sustainable agriculture and contrast climate change, according to a high-level conference hosted by FAO today.
“An efficient land-use approach where trees can be managed together with crops and animal production systems” is an essential component of the “new paradigm shift for sustainable agriculture,” said Director-General José Graziano da Silva said in a conference-opening statement delivered by Deputy Director-General Helena Semedo.
Agroforestry, an approach between forest and open-field farming, simultaneously provides an array of social, economic and environmental benefits ranging from nutritious food and renewable energy to clean water and enhanced biodiversity.
“We need better coordination of farm and non-farm natural resource management,” Graziano da Silva said.
Agroforestry’s mixed land-use approach makes it a tailor-made example of how the agricultural sector can contribute to the global effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The bad news is that we are fast approaching (likely within 25 years) “the point of no return” for retaining enough climate stability, soil fertility, water and biodiversity to support human life on this planet. The toxic synergy of our out-of-control political, energy, food, farming and land-use systems threaten our very survival. The good news is that tried-and-tested, shovel-ready, regenerative food, farming, grazing and land use practices, scaled up on billions of acres of farmland, pasture and forests, combined with zero emissions and a renewable energy economy, can draw down and sequester enough excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into our soils, forests and wetlands to reverse global warming. Besides re-stabilizing the climate, this great carbon ‘drawdown’ and regeneration will qualitatively enhance soil fertility and yields, increase rainwater infiltration and storage in soils, supercharge food quality and nutrition, rejuvenate forests and oceans, and preserve and stimulate biodiversity—thereby addressing the underlying causes of rural poverty, hunger, deteriorating public health, political malaise and global conflict. – Social media post by the Organic Consumers Association and Regeneration International from the “Green Zone” of the COP22 Global Climate Summit in Marrakesh, Morocco November 18, 2016
Thousands of us attending the COP22 Global Climate Summit in Marrakesh, Morocco—delegates and rank-and-file activists from every nation in the world—woke up on November 9, 2016, to the alarming news that rabid climate deniers and zealots for hyper-industrial agriculture and fossil fuels had seized control of the White House and the U.S. Congress.
Just days after a panel of eminent international scientists warned that we are approaching the point of no return in terms of runaway global warming, Donald (“the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing uncompetitive…”) Trump made it clear where he and his cabal of wealthy, misogynist, racist, cronies stand.
The day after the election, Trump announced that he intended to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Treaty, supercharge the coal, fracking and fossil fuel industries, and eliminate federal regulations designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As part of his “Making America Great Again” agenda, Trump named Myron Ebell to oversee the transition at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Ebell, head of both the climate-denying think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cooler Heads Coalition, was reviled last year at the Paris Climate Summit for being one of the world’s top “climate criminals.”
Intercept newsletter outlined Ebell’s credentials as a point man for the new Climate Denier-in-Chief: “A non-scientist whose funders have included ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and coal giant Murray Energy Corporation, Ebell has been a consistent taunter of both scientists and environmentalists. As a talking head on TV news, he has for years offered false balance on climate change in the form of views so far outside of the mainstream as to be downright bizarre. For Ebell, Al Gore is “an extremist” who “lives in a fantasy world.” And the Pope’s encyclical on climate change is a ‘diatribe against modern industrial civilization.’ Current climate patterns, say Ebell, indicate an imminent ice age rather than a warming planet.
Trump’s Fossil Fuel über alles could not come at a worst moment. Just when the world needs all hands on deck to fight the war against runaway global warming, Trump and his men (and women) are going AWOL. Compounding the threat of Trump and his minions on climate policy, the frightening bottom line for the global grassroots is that politicians, corporations, climate negotiators, scientists, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have seriously underestimated the current and near-future (25 years) impacts of saturating the atmosphere with more greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution than the Earth has endured for hundreds of thousands of years.
The climate chaos unleashed by current GHG levels in the atmosphere (400 ppm of CO2 and rising 2 ppm every year and a one-degree C rise in average global temperatures so far) and oceans is already alarming. But what makes our predicament truly frightening is that the noxious chemical GHG blanket already enveloping the Earth is increasingly magnified by powerful feedback mechanisms including: the melting of the polar icecaps; a sharp increase in water vapor (a powerful global warming gas) in the atmosphere; deforestation; soil erosion; desertification; disruption of cloud formations; and the “methane bomb” (the runaway thawing and release into the atmosphere of billions of tons of methane gas now frozen and sequestered in the vast tundra and the shallow sea beds of the Arctic). These planetary global warming feedback mechanisms, unless reversed, will detonate over the next few decades triggering rapidly rising temperatures; rising sea levels and catastrophic coastal flooding; extremely violent storms, droughts, and wildfires; deadly outbreaks of disease and pestilence; and massive crop failures and starvation, culminating in wholesale ecosystem destruction and species extinction.
The call-to-action from Marrakesh is that U.S. and global “business-as-usual” is rapidly moving the planet toward runaway global warming—not just two degrees C of global warming, which will be extremely dangerous, but 5-7 degrees C, which will be catastrophic.
The energy- and chemical-intensive US and global food and factory farming system, now controlled by a multinational cartel of agribusiness, junk food, chemical and genetic engineering corporations, is literally cooking the planet. By spewing out 15-20 billion tons of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere every year (according to United Nations report, 44-57% of all emissions), by degenerating, with GMOs, pesticides, chemical fertilizers and deforestation, the miraculous ability of soils, forests and wetlands to naturally absorb (through photosynthesis) these greenhouse gases and safely store them in the soils and biota, this system is pushing us toward the final cliff, the “point of no return.” (More on the climate impact of our degenerative food, farming, and land use here. And here).
With demonstrably degenerate Climate Deniers in control of the White House and the U.S. Congress for the next four years, we have no choice but to step up our organizing and our actions, from Main Street to Morocco. Every concerned citizen in the world needs to become an active communicator, starting with family and friends, reaching out to all those willing to listen and make change. Circles of concerned friends and acquaintances must evolve into Circles of Resistance and Regeneration.
Every food, justice, health, peace and democracy activist needs to “connect the dots” between the burning issues and become a climate activist. At the same time, every climate activist needs to move beyond tunnel-vision single-issue organizing to a holistic “Movement of Movements” approach. The first step in global resistance, the first step in regenerating our toxic political, energy, food, farming and land-use system is to broaden our awareness and our consciousness, to break down the walls and the single-issue silos that have held us back from building a truly local-to-global Movement of Movements. Our new Internationale, our new Regeneration Movement, must be powerful and inspirational enough to enable us not only to survive, but to thrive.
Taking the time to grieve and commiserate over our current political and climate emergency, taking the time to regenerate ourselves and our circles of friends and acquaintances, we must begin to strategically weave together our common concerns, our constituencies, our resistance, our positive actions and solutions. Once we establish synergy and cooperation among the different currents in the Movement, we will generate ever more powerful waves, circles of renewal and resistance, with the capacity to spread outward from our local communities into entire regions, nations and continents, until a regenerative wave spans the globe. This is la lucha grande, the great struggle, that will last for the rest of our lives. Don’t just mourn, organize. Our lives and the lives of our children hang in the balance.
The good news is that planetary awareness, along with renewable energy and conservation, is growing by leaps and bounds. Leaving remaining fossil fuels in the ground and converting to solar, expanding wind and other renewable forms of energy, retrofitting our transportation and housing systems, and re-carbonizing and restoring soil fertility, forests and wetlands—these initiatives are not just good for the climate, they’re also good for the growth of ethical businesses, for public health and for the body politic.
We must come to grips with the fact that we will be forced to endure four more dangerous years here in the U.S. in terms of reducing fossil fuel emissions, and phasing out coal and fracking. But as the global grassroots, scientists, farmers and climate negotiators here in Marrakesh have acknowledged, we are all in this together. Spokespersons for China, the world’s largest emitter of fossil fuels, as well as 197 other nations here in Marrakesh, reacting to Trump’s proclamation that the U.S. will abandon the Paris Climate Treaty, have made it clear that they will move forward toward zero emissions by 2050, no matter what the Trump administration does.
We can’t all do everything, but we certainly all can do something. We all eat, and many of us on the Earth (three billion in fact) are still making our living off the land—farming, grazing, fishing, gardening, hunting and gathering. In the consumer economies of the global North hundreds of millions of organic and health-minded consumers are starting to understand that “we are what we eat,” and that what we purchase and consume has a tremendous impact, not only on our health and the health of our families, but on the environment and the climate as well. To regenerate and save the living Earth and human civilization we will need to build an active transnational alliance and solidarity between several billion conscious consumers and farmers. This is the only force with the power to put an end to business as usual.
Our most popular slogans or campaigns here in Marrakesh—emblazoned on our banners, leaflets and t-shirts, broadcast in our newsletters and social media, repeated over and over again in our media interviews and workshops, and translated into multiple languages including English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese are: Cook Organic Not the Planet, Boycott Factory-Farmed Food, and Regeneration International: Cool the Planet, Feed the World.
Moving forward from Marrakesh, we are committed to re-localizing and regenerating local foods, local economies and communities. But while building out and scaling up local solutions, we must also join with our consumer and farmer allies across the globe to literally force multinational GMO, chemical-intensive and factory-farmed food brands and corporations to go organic and grass-fed. And we must pressure organic brands and producers to move beyond organic to fully regenerative practices. Our collective campaigns must ultimately transform the eating and purchasing habits of millions of consumers, raise the living standards of several billion farmers and rural villagers, and free billions of farm animals from cruel and climate-destructive Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)—putting these animals back on the land where their grazing and natural behaviors will help sequester billions of tons of carbon in pastures and agro-forestry landscapes.
You can learn more about our Cook Organic Not The Planet campaign here. Please sign up for OCA’s newsletter, Organic Bytes: Please join our Facebook page here: To find out more about our Regeneration International: Cool the Planet, Feed the World campaign, visit regenerationinternational.org. Follow RI on Facebook
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To acquaint yourself with the basic science that underlies regenerative food and farming, please read this document and share it widely. It’s available in ten different languages on the RI website.
On November 17, in Marrakesh, following up on the Paris Climate Treaty last year, over two dozen countries and several hundred civil society organizations reaffirmed their commitment to the “4 for 1000 Initiative” originally put forth by the French government. Countries that sign the “4 per 1000 Initiative” pledge, as part of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to mitigate and reverse global warming, to draw down or sequester as much excess atmospheric carbon in their soils as they are currently emitting, utilizing organic, agro-ecological, and regenerative farming, grazing and land use practices, and to continue this process for the next 25 years, until atmospheric levels of GHG return to the safe levels that existed prior to the industrial revolution.
Our Regeneration International project, as well as OCA, are among the civil society organizations that have signed the pledge. We are also now officially part of the 4 per 1000 global consortium, and as such will continue to play an active role in supporting and promoting the initiative.
On January 12, 2017, organic, climate, natural health, environmental, peace, justice and regeneration activists across the U.S. and beyond will launch Regeneration Thursdays. The plan is to organize, on the second Thursday of each month, community self-organized meet-ups at designated locations, such as brew pubs and community restaurants. These social gatherings, part celebratory, part serious discussion, are intended to break down walls, make new friends and allies, generate camaraderie, explore potential cooperation, and eventually build up greater grassroots marketplace and political power.
Our hope is that regeneration meet-ups will catalyze and inspire a new dynamic, with activists or would-be activists from all of our Movements—food, climate, peace, justice, natural health, democracy—coming together on a regular basis to celebrate, commiserate and cooperate, to share organic and local food and drink, and to discuss how we can build a stronger synergy between our various efforts and campaigns. Regeneration Thursdays is envisioned as an ongoing campaign, starting small but over time taking root and spreading virally into hundreds, and eventually thousands of communities.
The Organic Consumers Association and Regeneration International, along with some of our closest allies, have pledged to provide resources (including organic food) in strategic communities to get the Regeneration Thursdays meet-ups going. Part of the preparation for Regeneration Thursdays will be to work with local regenerators to strategically identify and invite key people, especially youth, who share a broad vision for moving beyond single-issue organizing and campaigning to a more holistic and powerful Movement. If you and your circle of friends or organization are willing to help organize a Regeneration Thursday in your local community, please send an email to: campaigns@organicconsumers.org
The crisis is dire. The hour is late. But we still have time to turn things around. Don’t just mourn. Please join us as we organize, educate, mobilize and regenerate.
Ronnie Cummins is international director of the Organic Consumers Association and a member of the Regeneration International steering committee.
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