“Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.” – Rebecca Solnit, writer, activist

It’s a miracle of nature. No matter how bitter cold the winter, spring rolls around again, without fail.

Animals emerge from hibernation. Plants shoot up through ground that just weeks ago was frozen solid.

It gives us hope. It inspires action.

It’s in that spirit of spring and rebirth and regeneration that I write today asking for your support for one of our most critical projects: our collaboration with Regeneration International and other organizations to remake—to revolutionize—our food and farming system.

Your donation today will help fund a massive collaborative effort to build an organic and regenerative food and farming system. Can you help us reach our spring fundraising goal? You can donate online, by mail or by phone—details here.

This country’s factory farm system is a dangerous disaster.

Much of our work here at Organic Consumers Association is devoted to exposing all that’s wrong with factory farms, to holding the corporations that dominate and perpetuate this system accountable.

Factory farms are destroying our country, our food, our farms, our environment.

They’re destroying our communities and economies. Injuring and under-paying workers. Unleashing an antibiotic-resistance public health crisis. Running small independent farms into bankruptcy. Inflicting horrendous suffering on animals.

For what? Obscene profits for a handful of corporations who stick consumers and taxpayers with the cleanup and healthcare bills.

There’s a better way. That’s why we’re dedicating as much of our staff and financial resources as possible to disrupting business-as-usual by advancing an alternative that will regenerate our farms, our food, our health, our soil, our water, our economies, our communities—and even restore climate stability.

Right now, our staff is working with some of the most brilliant farmers and business leaders, economists and healthcare practitioners, food activists and climate activists in this country to build a 12-state Regeneration Midwest Alliance.

We even have the attention of some enlightened politicians, on both sides of the aisle.

What will this alliance do? It will collaborate throughout the Midwest—the heartland and lynchpin of factory farms and GMOs—and beyond—to build out the infrastructure for a new, regenerative food and farming model.

Let’s not kid ourselves. This will require a lot of work, a lot of collaboration among disparate stakeholders.

We will face many challenges, not the least of which will be pushback from entrenched corporations desperate to prevent us from disrupting their model—and their profits.

But challenging is not the same as impossible. We aren’t talking about something that might exist someday, somewhere, in a galaxy far, far away.

We are talking here, now, today. Because our lives depend on it.

I’ve seen the proof that we have all the ingredients at our fingertips to remake this country’s food and farming system, starting from the inside—the Midwest—out.

But we’ll need your help. That’s why I’m asking for your financial support today.

I love this paragraph from the article, “Can We Cure the Global Eating Disorder?” by Gunnar Rundgren:

But the food system is a life support system and should be based on the principles of living systems, not on the perceived efficiency of the industrial model. Linear thinking and linear processes are fundamentally at odds with the cycles of nature and, ultimately, nature still rules.

Not for a minute will we stop confronting the corporations that pollute and plunder.

But we must work equally hard to bring forth a viable alternative, an alternative “as beautiful as spring.”

The time for an organic and regenerative agriculture system, based on the principles of nature, a system that nourishes our bodies and our communities and heals our planet, is now.

Can you help us reach our spring fundraising goal? You can donate online, by mail or by phone—details here.

In solidarity,

Ronnie Cummins
International Director

 

P.S. Organic Consumers Association is the major funder of Regeneration International (RI). Our partnership with RI is critical to our efforts to end factory farming and advance a new, organic and regenerative food and farming system. We need your help. Please make a generous donation to our spring fundraising campaign today, details here.