“Let us not talk falsely now, for the hour is getting late.”

Bob Dylan, “All Along the Watchtower”

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Beyond the gloom and doom of the climate crisis,
there lies a powerful and regenerative grassroots force: organic food, farming,
and ranching. Even as politicians and the powerful fossil fuel lobby drag their
heels and refuse to acknowledge that we have about ten years left of “business
as usual” before we irreversibly destroy the climate and ourselves, there is a
powerful, though largely unrecognized, life-force spreading its roots
underground.

Millions of organic farmers, ranchers,
conservationists, and backyard gardeners (supported by millions of organic consumers) are demonstrating that we
can build a healthy alternative to industrial agriculture and Food Inc. Our
growing organic movement is proving that we can not only feed the world with
healthy food, but also reverse global warming, by capturing and sequestering
billions of tons of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases in the soil, through
plant photosynthesis, composting, cover crops, rotational grazing, wetlands
preservation, and reforestation.

The heretofore unpublicized “good news” on climate
change, according to the Rodale Institute and other soil scientists, is
that transitioning
from chemical, water, and energy-intensive industrial agriculture practices to
organic farming and ranching on the world’s 3.5 billion acres of farmland and
8.2 billion acres of pasture or rangeland can sequester 7,000 pounds per acre of
climate-destabilizing CO2 every year, while nurturing healthy soils, plants,
grasses, and trees that are resistant to drought, heavy rain, pests, and
disease. And of
course organic
farms and ranches can provide us with food that is much more nutritious than
industrial farms and ranches—food filled with vitamins, anti-oxidants, and
essential trace minerals, free from Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs),
pesticides, antibiotics, and sewage sludge.

In 2006, U.S. carbon dioxide pollution from fossil
fuels (approximately 25% of the world’s total) was estimated at nearly 6.5
billion tons. If a 7,000 lb/CO2/ac/year sequestration rate were achieved on all
434 million acres of cropland in the United States, nearly 1.6 billion tons of
carbon dioxide would be sequestered per year, mitigating close to one quarter
of the country’s total fossil fuel emissions. If pastures and rangelands were
similarly converted to organic practices, we would literally be well on our way
to reversing global warming.

But we need an organic revolution in ranching and
livestock production, as well as farming and forestry. We need to drastically
reduce meat overproduction (77% of all U.S. agriculture resources are devoted
to raising animals or animal feed), and over-consumption (a leading cause of
obesity, heart disease and cancer) and ban methane-belching factory farms. As
the Rodale Institute points out, organic livestock raising practices, including
rotational grazing, manure management, methane capture for biogas production,
and improved feeds and feed additives, can drastically reduce livestock-related
emissions and, because of the massive acreage currently devoted to livestock
production (nearly 2.5 times greater than croplands), can safely sequester
approximately 60% of the total greenhouse gases that humans, animals, cars, and
industry are pumping out every year.

This Organic Revolution, or “Great Sequestering,”
made possible by a global grassroots movement with the power to transform the
marketplace and public policy, is perhaps the only short-term strategy or
solution at hand that can buy us the precious time we need to radically reduce
energy use and greenhouse pollution and build a green economy. Although
politicians and the coal and utilities industry claim that sequestration of
massive carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants is on the
horizon, there is little or no scientific evidence to back this up.
Sequestration of CO2 in the soils of organic farms and ranches, on the other
hand, is a proven fact.

Before carbon-sequestering forests and grasslands
were ravaged by chemical-intensive industrial agriculture (and industrial forestry),
organic matter generally composed 6-10% of the soil
volume, three to six times the 1-3% levels typical of today’s industrial
agriculture soils. In other words, taxpayer subsidized, chemical-based
industrial agriculture, factory farms, and unrestricted grazing (along with
industrial forestry) have turned the earth’s soil (which still contains three
times as much carbon as the entire amount of CO2 in the atmosphere) from being
a climate-stabilizing carbon sink into a massive and dangerous source of global
warming.

Given our escalating climate emergency, the burning
question is how do we move organics in the U.S. from being the 4% alternative
in the marketplace to being the norm, and organic acreage from being 1% of
total cultivated land to the majority of farmland, pasture, and rangeland? The
answer of course is that we must sound the alert, offer up our practical
solutions and rapidly transform public consciousness and policy. But the

Via Organica, the road to get there,
will be long and arduous. The majority of Americans must not only stop buying
chemical, GMO, globally sourced and so-called “natural” food, and switch to
organic and more locally and regionally produced products, but we must also
rise up as a political movement and change public policy. We must literally
force the politicians and the corporations to put a halt to our “business as
usual” destruction of the climate and public health, and instead move to an
ethical and scientifically grounded policy and practice that promotes health,
conservation, greenhouse gas reduction, and organic sequestration. Please join
and support the OCA and the global organic movement as we wage this epic
struggle.