“Regenerative agriculture provides answers to the soil crisis, the meat crisis, the atmosphere crisis, and the crisis of democracy.”~ Dr. Vandana Shiva, Co-Founder Regeneration International
Regenerative agriculture and holistic livestock handling represents the next, crucial stage of organic food and raising , is not simply forestalling lethal pesticides, fertilizers, sewage sludge, GMO seeds and excess greenhouse gas emissions, but regenerating soil birthrate, irrigate retention, carbon sequestration and urban supports as well.
Regeneration has now become the hottest topic in the natural and organic food sector. At the same time, environment partisans regularly discuss the role of organic and regenerative practises in reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and sequestering excess atmospheric carbon dioxide in grunges and agricultural landscapes.
Inside Regeneration International, which now includes 400 affiliates in more than 60 countries, our primary focus is moving beyond the basics of Regeneration to identifying regenerative and organic “best practices” around the globe and figuring out how to utilize farmer innovation, mart require, program reform and public and private investing to qualitatively spread and scale up these best practices so that organic and regenerative becomes standards and norms, rather than merely the alternative, for the planet’s now degenerative multitrillion-dollar food, raising and land use system.
Either we move beyond simply treating the symptoms of our planetary deterioration and build instead a brand-new method based upon regenerative meat, farming and land use planning, coupled with renewable energy practices and world cooperation instead of superpower competition and hostility, or we will soon pass the point of no return.
In 2010 Olaf Christen stated, “Regenerative agriculture is an approach in agriculture that rebuffs pesticides and synthetic fertilizers and is intended to improve the regeneration of the topsoil, biological diversity and the liquid cycle.”1 This equals almost exactly with the stated the concept of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements( IFOAM) or Organics International.
Since 2014, the Rodale Institute, IFOAM, Dr. Bronner’s, Dr. Mercola, Patagonia, the Real Organic Project, the Biodynamic Movement, the Organic Consumers Association, Regeneration International, Navdanya and others have also been discussing and implementing organic standards, practices and certification, which incorporate regenerative principles.
Changing the Conversation: Regenerative Food and Farming
In September 2014 a group of food, natural state and environment activists, including Vandana Shiva, Andre Leu, Will Allen, Steve Rye, Alexis Baden-Meyer and staff from Dr. Bronner’s, Dr. Mercola, Organic Consumers Association and the Rodale Institute, coordinated a news conference at the big climate advance in New York City to announce the process of developing Regeneration International and to set for ourselves a simple, but what seemed like then, bold, goal.
We all pledged to change the conversation on the environment crisis in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world — then narrowly focused on renewable energy and energy conservation — so as to incorporate regenerative and organic food, farming and land use planning as a major solution, yielded its confirmed ability to drawdown and sequester massive amounts of excess carbon dioxide emissions from the sky and accumulation it in the clay, trees, and plants.
Now, seven years later, it appears that our growing Regeneration Movement has achieved this goal. Regeneration is now the hottest topic in the natural and organic food and farming sector, while environment organizers including the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion regularly talk about the role of organic and regenerative traditions in reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.
More and more beings now understand that we can achieve, through increased photosynthesis and drawdown, “Net Zero” radiations by 2030, a anatomy that are essential if we are to avoid climate catastrophe.
Identifying Regenerative and Organic ‘Best Practices’
Inside Regeneration International, which now includes 400 affiliates2 in more than 60 countries, our conversation has changed from promoting a basic discussion about organic and regenerative nutrient, raising and land-use to identifying regenerative and organic “best practices” around the globe.
Our discussions and strategizing are not just an academic usage. As most of us now realize, our continued survival as a civilization and a genu is threatened by a systemic crisis that has degraded climate stability, our menu and environmental purposes, along with every major aspect of modern life.
This mega-crisis cannot be resolved by piecemeal reforms or minor readjustments such as somewhat chipping our current levels of fossil fuel use, reducing world deforestation and soil degradation or by reducing military spending.
Either we move beyond merely giving the symptoms of our planetary deterioration and build instead a brand-new arrangement based upon regenerative meat, farming and land use, coupled with renewable energy practices and world-wide cooperation instead of belligerence, or we will soon( likely within 25 years) pass the point of no return.
A big challenge is how do we describe the problem in such a way that everyday beings understand their own problems and grasp the solution that we’re proposing, i.e ., renewable energy and regenerative nutrient, raising and land use planning?
Enhanced Photosynthesis Is All-Important
The bottom line is that humans have put too much CO2 and other greenhouse gases( especially methane and nitrous oxide) into the atmosphere( from burning fossil fuel and pernicious land use planning ), trapping the sun’s heat from extending back into cavity and heating up the planet.
And, regrettably, because of the destructive nutrient, raising and forestry traditions that have cheapened a major portion of the Earth’s landscape, we’re not reaping down enough of these CO2 radiations through embed photosynthesis, clay carbon sequestration, and perennial above ground carbon storage in biomass( timber, grass, and plants) to cool things off.
In a word, there’s too much CO2 and greenhouse gas pollution blanketing the sky( and saturating the oceans) and not enough life-giving carbon in the floor and in our living seeds, trees, grasslands and rangelands.
Increasing plant and forest photosynthesis( attained via intensified clay fertility and biological being, as well as an adequate amount of sea and minerals) is the only practical way that we can draw down a significant amount of the excess CO2 and greenhouse gases in our flavor that are heating up the Earth and disrupting our climate.
Through photosynthesis, flowers and trees implement solar energy to break down CO2 from the flavour, liberate oxygen and transform the remaining carbon into bush biomass and liquid carbon.
Photosynthesis basically enables plants to grow above anchor and display biomass, but also quickens growth below ground as bushes give a portion of the liquid carbon they render through photosynthesis into their root systems to feed the clay micro-organisms that in turn feed the plant.
From the standpoint of drawing down enough CO2 and greenhouse gases from the ambiance and sequestering them in our grunges and biota, qualitatively augmented photosynthesis is all-important.
Agave Power: Greening the Desert
As RI, OCA, and our Mexico affiliate Via Organica’s contribution to the global expansion of regenerative and organic food and raising practises, we have wasted the last several years working with Mexican farmers and ranchers, the Hudson Carbon Project, buyer organisations, elected political officials( principally at the local and position grade ), and socially and environmentally-concerned “impact investors.”
Our goal is to develop a native agave agroforestry and livestock management system that we feel can be a game-changer for much of the 40% of the world’s pasturelands and rangelands that are arid and semi-arid, areas where it is now nearly impossible to grow food cultivates without irrigation, and where the land is too overgrazed and cheapened for suitable sheep grazing.
We call this Mexico-based agave and agroforestry/ sheep handling structure Agave Power: Greening the Desert, and are happy to report that its ideas and patterns are now starting to spread from the high-pitched desert plateau of Guanajuato across much of arid and semi-arid Mexico.
We now are receiving inquiries and requests for information about this agave-based, polyculture/ perennial system from desert and semi-desert countries all over the world, including The countries of central america, the Southwestern U.S ., Argentina, Chile, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Australia, Lebanon, and Oman.
You can learn more about this Agave Power method on the websites of Regeneration International and the Organic Consumers Association. 3
Primary Drivers of Regeneration and Degeneration
What I and others “ve learned” “on the ground” trying to expand and scale-up regenerative and organic best traditions is that there are four basic motorists of regenerative( or conversely degenerative) food, farming and land use.
The first operator is customer awareness and market demand. Without an legion of intentional consumers and widespread marketplace demand, regenerative rehearsals are unlikely to reach critical mass. The second operator is farmer, rancher and property stewardship invention, including the development of value-added concoctions and ecosystem repair services.
The third operator is policy change, starting at the local and regional level. And last, but not least is regenerative finance — large-scale investing on the part of the public and private sector, which are currently being commonly known as “impact investing.”
In order to qualitatively expand organic and regenerative best practices and achieve critical mass sufficient to transform our currently degenerative plans, the work requires all four members of these operators to be activated and working in synergy.
Four Contemporary Drivers of Degeneration
Let’s look now at four contemporary operators of deterioration, degenerative meat, raising and land use planning, in order to understand what the forces or motorists are that are impounding us back from moving forward to regeneration.
1. Degenerated Grassroots Consciousness and Morale — When literally billions of parties, a critical mass of the 99%, are hungry, malnourished, and/ or stuffed and supersized with ultraprocessed foods and empty-bellied calories, revolution is all but impossible.
When billions are scared and fractioned, struggling to survive with justice and dignity … when the majority of members of the global body politic are threatened and onslaught by a lethal environment and food system; when hundreds of millions are overwhelmed by fiscal stress due to low-toned compensations and the high cost of living; when hundreds of millions are faded by chronic health problems, or battered by submerges, shortages and brave extremes, regenerative vary — Big Change — will not come easily.
Neither will it happen if we continue to allow endless fights and shore grabs for liquid, territory and strategic resources to coiling out of control, or fail to organize and resist on a mass magnitude while indentured legislators, firms, Big Tech and the mass media manipulate crises such as COVID-1 9 to stamp out freedom of expression and participatory democracy in order to coerce a “Business-as-Usual” or “Great Reset” paradigm down our throats.
Disempowered, exploited beings, overwhelmed by the challenges of everyday survival, usually don’t have the luxury of connecting the dots between the issues that are pressing down on them and focusing on the Big Picture.
It’s the job of regenerators to connect the dots between the environment crisis, COVID-1 9, nobility sovereignty and people’s everyday concerns including nutrient, natural health, jobs and financial right, to globalize awareness, political mobilization and, most of all, to globalize hope.
It’s the job of regenerators to induce the relationships between personal and public health and planetary health, to disclose the truth about the lineages, sort, prevention and treatment of COVID-1 9 and chronic disease, and to mobilize the public to reject a so-called Great Reset disguised as fundamental reform, but actually a Wooden horse for a 21 st Century Technocracy that is profoundly antidemocratic and authoritarian.
Regenerators have to be able to become the connections between different issues and concerns, identify and support best practitioners and policies and build synergy between social armies, effectively lobby governments( starting at the local level ), businesses and investors for alteration, all the while improving and coordinating grassroots relationships and campaigns across communities, constituencies and even national borders.
But of course this long-overdue Regeneration Revolution will not be easy , nor will it take place overnight.
Our profoundly damaging, degenerative, climate-destabilizing food and farming organization, principally located upon industrial agriculture inputs and rehearsals, is held together by a multibillion-dollar system of sell and marketing that has misinformed or literally brainwashed a global military of consumers into believing that cheap, ultraprocessed, artificially flavored, “fast food” is not only acceptable, but “normal” and “natural.”
After decades of spending carbohydrate, salt, carbohydrate-rich and “bad fat”-laden nutrients from industrial farms, animal factories and chemical manufacturing plants, numerous shoppers have literally become addicted to the artificial spices and odors that realise super-processed foods and “food-like substances” so popular.
2. Degenerate ‘Conventional’ Farms and Livestock Management — Compounding the lack of nutritional education, preference, poverty, inertia and apathy of a large segment of consumers, other major factors driving our degenerative food and farming organization include the routine and deep institutionalized practices of industrial and chemical-intensive farming and land use( monocropping, ponderous plowing, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, GMOs, factory farms, deforestation, wetlands termination) today.
These soil-, climate-, health- and environmentally-destructive traditions are especially prevalent on the world’s 50 million huge farms, which, in part, are kept in place by world government subsidies totaling $ 500 billion a year.
Meanwhile, there are few or no aids for organic or regenerative farmers, especially small farmers ( 80% of the world’s farmers are small farmers ), nor for farmers and ranchers who tries to make this transition.
Reinforcing these multibillion-dollar subsidies for bad agricultural rehearses are a global network of chemical- and agribusiness-controlled agricultural research and teaching institutions, focused on producing cheap food and beverages( no matter what the cost to the environment, atmosphere and public health) and agro-export agricultural merchandises( often pesticide-intensive GMO grains ).
What we need instead are aids for organic and regenerative practises, research and technical assistance for farmers and ranchers to produce healthful, organic and regenerative nutrient for regional, the regions and domestic markets, reinforcing farmers with a fair price for producing health meat and being a steward, rather than a ruin, of the environment.
3. Monopoly Control — Another driver of degeneration, holding back farmer adoption of regenerative practices and determining the type of food and cultivates that are produced, is the monopoly or near-monopoly control by giant agribusiness corporations over much of the food items, especially in industrialized countries, as well as the monopoly or near-monopoly control by beings retail series such as Walmart and internet monstrous like Amazon.
The out-of-control “Foodopoly” that dominates our food system is designed to maximize short-term profits and exportations for the great transnational firms, prolong patents and monopoly self-restraint over grains, and uphold international trade agreements( NAFTA, WTO) that kindnes corporate agribusiness and vast farms over small-scale farms; factory farms over traditional grazing and animal husbandry; and agro- exports instead of production for local and regional markets.
Food and raising is the largest industry in the world with buyers spending an estimated $7.5 trillion a year on food. In addition, the largely unacknowledged social, environmental and health payments( i.e ., collateral impair) of the industrial food chain amounts to an additional $ 4.8 trillion a year. 4
4. Degenerate Public Policy and Public and Private Asset — Agriculture is the largest employer in the world with 570 million farmers and farm laborers supporting 3.5 billion people in rural households and communities. 5 In addition to workers on the farm, food chain employees in processing, rationing and retail make up hundreds of millions of other jobs in the world, with over 20 million food chain works in the U.S. alone( 17.5% of the total workforce ).
This meets public policy relating to food, farming and land use very important. Unfortunately, thousands of laws and regulations are delivered each year, in every country and locality, that basically prop up conventional( i.e ., industrial, factory farm, export-oriented, GMO) menu and farming, while there is very little legislation elapsed or reserves geared toward promoting organic and regenerative nutrient and farming.
Trillions of dollars ought to have, and continues its work, be used in the so-called “conventional” food and agricultural world, including trillions from the savings and pension funds of numerous self-conscious shoppers, who would no doubt prefer their savings to be invested in a different manner, if they knew how to do this.
Unfortunately, only a tiny percentage of public or private financing is currently going toward organic, grass fed, free-range and other healthful foods is provided by big and medium-sized raises and ranches for local and regional consumption.
Healthy soil, healthy embeds, healthful animals, healthy people, healthy climate, healthful societies — our physical and fiscal state, our very survival as a genu, are directly connected to the soil, biological diversity and the state and birthrate of our food and farming methods. Regenerative organic farming and land use can move us back into match, back to a stable climate and a life-supporting environment.
It’s time to move beyond degenerate ethics, farming, land use planning, intensity programmes, politics and financials. It’s time to move beyond “too little, too late” mitigation and sustainability approaches. It’s time to inspire and mobilize a mighty world horde of Regenerators, before it’s too late.
Read more: articles.mercola.com
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