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As another year winds down, I’m appealing to you with a greater sense of urgency than ever before.

The longer industrial agribusiness is allowed to destroy soil fertility, pollute waterways, bankrupt family farms, and monopolize our food distribution system for the purpose of profiting off the sale of nutrient-deficient, pesticide- and drug-contaminated food, the harder it will be to reverse course.

We can’t wait.

OCA is committed to doubling down on our mission to protect your right to safe food and a healthy ecosystem. But we need  your support today. Can you help keep OCA going strong in 2020?

It’s legal to drink raw milk in all 50 states. But it’s legal to sell it in only 28 states.

Congress has never passed a ban on raw milk. Yet the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has used its regulatory authority to raid farms and prosecute farmers for distributing raw milk.

It’s time to protect farmers from raw milk raids, and make it legal and easy for consumers to buy raw milk.

TAKE ACTION: Ask Your Member of Congress to support your right to choose raw milk by supporting H.R. 5410, the Interstate Milk Freedom Act

Defying the machinations of discredited President Sebastian Pinera—who abruptly cancelled the Global Climate Summit in Santiago, Chile in reaction to the nationwide grassroots uprising that erupted here on October 18—an intrepid band of North and South American farmers, food activists and climate campaigners, under the banner of Regeneration International, came together in the Chilean capital of Santiago to share experiences and ideas, and to develop a common strategy for reversing global warming and resolving the other burning issues that are pressing down on us.

With global attention focused on Madrid, which hosted the December 2-13 official COP 25 Climate Summit after Chile pulled out, a number of us decided nevertheless to hold our own North and South America mini-summit here, expressing our solidarity with the Chilean people’s epic struggle, and, at the same time, giving some of the best practitioners and campaigners in the Regeneration Movement the opportunity to focus on what’s holding us back and how we can most quickly move forward.

Americans cherish the “family farm.” Most are also happy to be able to buy local foods at farmers markets, grocers or their favorite restaurants.

In the marketplace, consumers are sending the message that they want more sustainable and organic food, sales of which exceeded $50 billion last year. And the vast majority of people in our nation believe that climate change is real, and that urgent action needs to be taken.

While there is some variability depending upon one’s political affiliation, Democrats and Republicans alike hold these views. If this is what we collectively believe, across party, then surely our politics and public policies support these priorities, right?

Well, not so much.

Agave plants (the best known of which are blue agave, used to produce tequila), along with nitrogen-fixing, companion trees such as mesquite, huizache, desert ironwood, wattle and varieties of acacia that readily grow alongside agave, are among the most common and prolific, yet routinely denigrated or ignored plants in the world.

Now, a new, agave-based agroforestry and livestock feeding model developed in Guanajuato, Mexico, promises to revitalize campesino/small farmer livestock production while storing massive amounts of atmospheric carbon above and below ground. 

Scaled up on millions of currently degraded and overgrazed rangelands, these agave-agroforestry systems have the potential to not only improve soil and pasture health, but to help mitigate and potentially reverse global warming, aka climate change.