Skip to main content
Organic Bytes edited by Katherine Paul and Ronnie Cummins
SUBSCRIBE  |  DONATEShare on FacebookFollow OCA on Twitter

ESSAY OF THE WEEK

A Beautiful Thing

persons hands holding a small globe of the earth in a meadow with grass and tiny flowers

Progress is a beautiful thing. Progress toward restoring the Earth’s natural cycles as the best way to avert a full-blown climate crisis—and solve a multitude of other looming crises in the process—is beautiful beyond words.

It was five years ago that a small but determined band of food, farm, natural health and climate activists gathered in New York at the massive People’s Climate March to launch a new global network: Regeneration International.

Regeneration International, and the global Regeneration Movement, have come a long way since then.

In this week’s essay, Ronnie outlines some of the progress this growing movement has made. Progress in the science of regenerative agriculture and carbon sequestration. Progress toward creating national and international policy initiatives to advance regenerative agriculture and land restoration as a climate solution. And progress in generating public awareness of the climate crisis and the Regeneration Movement.

And then he asks, “So, what do we do next?”

Read Ronnie’s essay: ‘Regeneration 2019: State of the Movement’

FARMERS & RANCHERS ONLY: Sign this letter to Congress

CONSUMERS: Sign this petition

Support Regeneration International with a tax-deductible donation

Sign up for Regeneration International’s newsletter

ACTION ALERT

Impossible Claims

plastic toy cheeseburgers on a green background

The Impossible Burger—deceptively marketed as “natural”—already contains a genetically engineered ingredient, a yeast referred to as "heme."

Now, Impossible Foods, maker of the fake meat patty, is adding another GMO ingredient: genetically engineered soy.

Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown wants you to think the switch to GMO soy was motivated by the company’s “commitment to consumers and our planet.”

Let’s call this announcement what it really is: a move to generate massive profits for Brown and Impossible Burger’s shareholders by using the cheapest—and least healthy and environmentally responsible—ingredients as possible.

Read ‘6 Reason’s Impossible Burger’s CEO Is Wrong about GMO Soy’

TAKE ACTION: Tell Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown: GMO Soy Is Bad for Consumers, Bad for the Planet

ACTION ALERT

Whatever It Takes

farmer and her son holding yellow tomatoes in a farm field

Chlorpyrifos is a neurotoxic organophosphate insecticide that, even at very low levels, has been linked to severe birth defects, brain damage and mental disorders in children, including ADHD and autism.

So why is it still being sprayed on more than 50 fruits and vegetables? Considering that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists, under the Obama administration, said it should banned?

Because the chemical’s maker, DowDuPont, has a lot of money and influence. And because the Trump administration loves a profitable corporation—especially one that’s happy to bribe politicians.

Absent any indication that federal regulators will step up to protect the public, some states are enacting their own bans on this toxic pesticide.

Could your state be next? We shouldn’t have to beg for laws that protect our kids from poisons. But if that’s what it takes . . .

TAKE ACTION: Ask your Governor and state legislators to ban chlorpyrifos!

SUPPORT OCA & CRL

You've Got This!

smiling farmer standing in a lime garden in a plaid shirt with her arms crossed

Filmmaker Damon Gameau wants us to imagine what the world could look like in 2040 if we focused on solutions—solutions that improve health, income inequality, security and communities with the bonus of drastically reducing emissions and regenerating ecosystems.

Gameau is no Pollyanna, he writes in a recent op-ed in the Guardian. He gets just how much trouble our planet is in.

But rather than be paralyzed by the relentless barrage of bad news, Gameau suggests that after we acknowledge how dire the situation is, we move on to focus on the solutions—solutions that already exist.

That’s the theme of the film he’s been working on for the past three years, called “2040.” Gameau describes the film as:

. . .  a visual letter to my daughter showing her what the world could look like that year if we put into practice some of the best solutions that exist today.

Those solutions, Gameau says, “include regenerative agriculture practices which takes carbon from the atmosphere and returns it to the soil with the cascading benefits of water retention and nutrient-dense food.”

In our newsletter this week, you’ll find the usual dose of bad news—burgers made with GMO soy, grown with a known carcinogen . . . the failure to ban a poison known to cause brain damage in children.

But you’ll also read about solutions, about the growing momentum behind the movement to regenerate everything from our soils and water, to our health, the economic and social revitalization of our communities and to the restabilization of our climate.

Regenerative agriculture solution isn’t the only solution to all of our problems. But it's an essential piece of the solution puzzle. And it’s here. Now.

We’ve got this. All we have to do is scale it up. And with your help, we will.

Make a tax-deductible donation to the Organic Consumers Association

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

Click here for more ways to support our work

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

'It Belongs to Us'

still from the trailer for the movie KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSE

In 2018, record numbers of women, people of color and political outsiders set out to transform Congress. Some of them won, some of them lost.

But they ran. They got involved. They challenged the status quo.

Whether you identify as Republican or Democrat, Libertarian, Independent or Green, the film “Knock Down the House” has lessons for all of us. 

This is a film about fearless people with passion. A film about having the courage to stand up for regular working people, to speak out against corporate interests, to challenge institutional power.

As one person in the film says:

"We don’t care about party. We just want to get stuff done. If we elect working people, working people can have representation in government, we can change the way we see politics, the way we see government in this country."

You might not agree with everyone in this film. You might not like their viewpoints on the issues.

But you’ve got to give them credit for reminding us that this government belongs to us. All of us. Not just the powerful and wealthy. And it’s time to take our government back.

Watch the trailer for “Knock Down the House”

Read ‘Knock Down the House and the Quiet Insurgency of Tears’

SAVE ORGANIC STANDARDS

Back to Basics

dew drops of water hanging on a tomato fruit and plant

Who knows better than someone who’s been an organic farmer for 50 years, what “organic farming” means?

Probably no one, especially if that organic farmer is Eliot Coleman.

It’s easy to forget that before there was a National Organic Program, before there was organic certification, before there were genetically engineered crops and industrial factory farms, there were farmers—farmers who grew nutritious food and raised healthy meat, using farming and ranching practices that worked with, and enhanced, Earth’s natural systems and cycles.

These farmers are the original “definers” of organic.

Read ‘Organic Farming Explained’

LITTLE BYTES

Essential Reading

Little Bytes

Trump: Importing Dangerous Medicines and Food and Keeping Consumers in the Dark

Trial in Monsanto’s Hometown Set for August after $2 Billion Roundup Cancer Verdict

Critics Question Ethics Behind Impossible Burger's Rapid Fast-Food Expansion

Neil Young, Grimes & Rufus Wainwright Push Green New Deal in Canada

Exposing the Dirty Business Behind the Designer Label

Meet the Sioux Chef: Revitalizing Native Foodways

You Can't 'Starve' Cancer, but You Might Help Treat It With Food

 follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | OCA on Pinterest  | Donate
Please forward this publication to family and friends, place it on web sites,
print it, duplicate it and post it freely. Knowledge is power!

Organic Bytes is a publication of Organic Consumers Association

6771 South Silver Hill Drive - Finland, MN 55603 - Phone: 218-226-4164 - Fax: 218-353-7652

Unsubscribe