AGROFORESTRY

Regenerative Carbon Offsets

The ongoing climate crisis has become a Climate Emergency as headlined recently by record-breaking heat waves and relentless drought. In my 2020 book, Grassroots Rising, I lay out a 10-year roadmap for reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. (whereby GHGs are cancelled out by carbon sequestered above ground and below ground by regenerative farming and land-use practices).

As I point out, the absolutely essential drivers for this “Great Drawdown” of heat-trapping gases currently super-saturating our atmosphere are consumer awareness/demand, farmer innovation, public policy change, and public/private investment.

To provide sufficient funds (hundreds of billions of dollars) to a critical mass of farmers and ranchers around the world to enable them to adopt regenerative practices, we will need to move beyond bogus “carbon credits” to Regenerative “carbon offsets,”  and substantial direct payments ($50-100 a ton for CO2 sequestered on a long-term basis) to farmers and ranchers for carbon sequestration practices that are real, transparent, ongoing, and scientifically verifiable.

OCA is partnering with Regeneration International and Hudson Carbon to pioneer Regenerative Carbon offsets, starting with best practices such as our Agave Agroforestry system. Via Organica’s Agave Agroforestry system is suitable for large areas of Mexico, the US Southwest, and much of the arid and semi-arid regions of the world.

READ MORE: Agave Power: Greening the Desert

And here is a short video on the Agave project

CLIMATE

The Carbon Footprint of Industrial Food & Farming

For years OCA has been talking about the enormous greenhouse gas emissions of our chemical- and energy-intensive industrial food, farming, and land-use system.

We have pointed out, over and over again, that we will never reverse global warming and re-stabilize our climate without a revolutionary transition from degenerative to regenerative practices.

In our 2019 essay (once considered controversial), “The Nine Percent Lie” we pointed out:

“Powerful corporations in the food, farming and forestry sector, along with their indentured politicians, don’t want to admit that their current degenerate, climate-destabilizing, “profit-at-any-cost” production practices and business priorities are threatening our very survival… The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) repeatedly claim that industrial agriculture is responsible for a mere 9 percent of our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions."

Recently Civil Eats has written an excellent article on the same topic.

Learn more: The Food System’s Carbon Footprint Has Been Vastly Underestimated

GENETIC ENGINEERING

Modified Microbes: The Latest Threat of Genetic Engineering

Even after a solid year of misinformation by industry, government, and the mass media, the majority of the U.S. population (59% of Republicans, 52% of Democrats) now finally realize that COVID-19 came out of a lab release in Wuhan, China.

This pandemic arose from a reckless U.S. and Chinese experiment which engineered and souped-up bat viruses, detonating a global pandemic that was subsequently mismanaged and manipulated by a global elite hell-bent on consolidating power, control, and wealth (“The Great Reset”).

The Institute for Responsible Technology, a longtime OCA ally in the battle against genetically engineered foods, has put the Wuhan catastrophe in its full context: GMO foods, gene editing, gene drives and Genetically Modified Microbes.

Learn more: Genetically Modified Microbes: Technological and Legislative Challenges and National Security Implications

ORGANICS

COVID-19 Spurs Rise in Organic Food & Farming

Organic food and farming experienced unprecedented growth in 2020.

Changes due to the pandemic included:

a vast increase in demand for healthy foods produced locally and regionally, increased cooking at home, increasing awareness of food security, a move towards traceability and transparency in food supply chains, and the increased importance of online retailing.

Read more: Increase in the Demand for Organic Food

MILLIONS AGAINST MONSANTO

Mexico's Ban on Glyphosate and GMO Corn Rattles GMO Industry

After more than a decade of campaigning and litigation, OCA’s Mexico sister organizations, Vía Orgánica and Milliones Contra Monsanto, are celebrating the recent Mexican government policy phasing out glyphosate and GMO corn imports.

As Reuters reports:

“GMO bans have vocal support from activists in Mexico, the birthplace of modern corn. The activists have for years blasted already-detected GMO contamination in fields planted with native strains of the grain.”

While GMO industry leaders including Bayer/Monsanto and Cargill are furiously lobbying the Biden administration to force Mexico to reverse its ban, Mexico activists are determined that the popular ban will stay in place.

Read more: Mexico to Ban Glyphosate, GM Corn Presidential Decree Comes Despite Intense Pressure from Industry, U.S. Authorities

BOOK CORNER

The Truth About COVID-19

Currently, Dr. Mercola and Ronnie Cummins’ new book, The Truth About COVID-19, has over 1,200 5-star reviews on Amazon.

It is sitting on several best-seller lists, and you can help keep it there! Order a copy for yourself, or friends and family here.

Learn more about the book and order your copy!

GAIN-OF-FUNCTION

Sign OCA's Petition: Ban the Reckless Engineering of Viruses

OCA’s Ban “Gain-of-Function” (GOF) campaign comes in the wake of mounting, now overwhelming, evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic arose out of a joint U.S.-China collaboration in Wuhan, China to “soup up” SARS bat coronaviruses, resulting in a catastrophic accident that has triggered the death of millions and detonated a multi-trillion-dollar meltdown of the global economy. 

Highly destructive, scientifically unjustified, authoritarian government responses and lockdowns have especially damaged the lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable—the elderly, the working class, low-income communities, minorities, small businesses, students, and youth. 

Over the next few months OCA and our allies will begin to build a U.S. and international coalition to ban all GOF experiments and rewrite global treaties such as the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention to prevent any and all PPPs (Potential Pandemic Pathogens) from being collected and engineered in labs, whether civilian or military.

Please sign our Ban GOF petition and encourage everyone you know to do the same

If you are a member of an organization that wishes to join this new Ban GOF coalition, please email alexis@organicconsumers.org.

SUPPORT OCA & CRL

Fight Back Against Genetically Modified Food and Microbes

For the past 23 years, Organic Bytes and the OCA have brought you weekly news, analysis, and Action Alerts, exposing the bad actors and policies, but trying our best to preserve and strengthen organic standards and ethical integrity and bring you the good news as well, most recently the latest developments in Regenerative and Organic food, farming, and land use as well as natural health.

But to carry on our work in the face of corporate lies, government intimidation, and now social media censorship, we need your help. 

Please get your friends and everyone you know to become subscribers of Organic Bytes, since we may be “de-platformed” any day now on Facebook and social media.  

Please ask everyone on your email list and your social media contacts to subscribe to Organic Bytes here. 

And we need your financial support as well, more than ever.

Please make a generous donation at this time, if you are able. Thank you for your support.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Support Citizens Regeneration Lobby, OCA’s 501(c)(4) lobbying arm (not tax-deductible)

Donate $100 or more and we’ll send you a copy of Ronnie’s book, Grassroots Rising

Click here for more ways to support our work

LITTLE BYTES

Essential Reading and Videos for the Week:

Urgent Warning About Stealth Poison in Your Food

The Deadly Censorship of Ivermectin

Fauci, Baric, and Moderna Already Had COVID Vaccine Candidate in December 2019

US Pushes Mexico on GMO Crops

Stop Organic Factory Farms from Calling their Milk Organic

White House May Finally Put an End to Labeling Imported Beef as “Product of the USA”

The Revolutionary Power of Food

Government Safety Studies on Glyphosate Are Seriously Flawed