REGENERATIVE AG

Urban/Suburban Food & Forest Reset

Trees and home gardens are good for our mental health as well as the health of our bodies and the environment. Monoculture grass lawns on the other hand, traditional status symbols, are artificial, environmentally destructive, and merely cosmetic. Urban areas (69 million acres) make up 3.6 percent of the U.S. land area (of the Lower 48 states) but include 81 percent of the population (19 percent of people live in rural areas). Urban areas are growing by a million acres a year. Lawn areas in US cities and towns are estimated to include forty million acres of turf grass, covering 1.9 percent of the land.

In my book, Grassroots Rising I point out that that, extrapolating from recent scientific research on the potential for global reforestation (1.2 trillion trees, added to our current global stock of three trillion trees would be able to sequester a full 10 years of current emissions), we could and should be planting 500 million new trees in U.S. urban and greater urban areas over the next decade, in addition to reforesting the 254 million acres of rural (non-crop) lands that are degraded or treeless. Many of our new urban and suburban trees could and should be fruit or nut trees, providing not just shade and greenery, and habitat for birds and pollinators, but food as well.

But we need backyard (and front yard) vegetable, herb, and pollinator gardens on our 40 million acres of lawn as well, replacing our pesticide, fertilizer, and water-intensive monocultures of lawn grass.

As noted economist Ellen Brown writes:

“A confluence of crises—lockdowns and business closures, mandates and worker shortages, supply chain disruptions and inflation, sanctions and war—have compounded to trigger food shortages; and we have been warned that they may last longer than the food stored in our pantries. What to do?

Jim Gale, founder of Food Forest Abundance, pointed out in a recent interview with Del Bigtree that in the United States there are 40 million acres of lawn. Lawns are the most destructive monoculture on the planet, absorbing more resources and pesticides than any other crop, without providing any yield. If we were to turn 30% of that lawn into permaculture-based food gardens, says Gale, we could be food self-sufficient without relying on imports or chemicals…

Russian families have shown the possibilities, using permaculture methods on simple cottage gardens or allotments called dachas. As Dr. Leon Sharashkin, a Russian translator and editor with a PhD in forestry from the University of Missouri, explains:

“Essentially, what Russian gardeners do is demonstrate that gardeners can feed the world – and you do not need any GMOs, industrial farms, or any other technological gimmicks to guarantee everybody’s got enough food to eat. Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing season per year – so in the US, for example, gardeners’ output could be substantially greater. Today, however, the area taken up by lawns in the US is two times greater than that of Russia’s gardens – and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.”

Russian dachas or home gardens, usually located on the perimeter of urban areas, produce approximately 50% of families’ food on three percent of the land. During the Second World War U.S. (and UK) backyard “Victory Gardens” did the same.”

Learn more: Ellen Brown: The Food Shortage Solution in Your Own Backyard

POLITICAL RESTORATION

Russell Brand and Matt Taibbi on the Great Reset

Russell Brand interviews renowned U.S. journalist Matt Taibbi, on how did the Great Reset (centralizing the power of the global elite and transferring wealth from the working class to the ruling class) and the economic and food crisis come about, and why people are losing faith in Democracy.

Did the Great Reset originate during the Obama Administration after the Wall Street Crash, when the government bailed out the banks and screwed homeowners and the working class, or during 2016-2020 when business as usual continued, despite the clever and effective rhetoric of Trump, demonizing the greed of the rich and corruption of federal officials?

Or did the Great Reset just recently emerge during the 2020-22 Pandemania, when an international non-elected financial and Big Pharma/medical elite joined forces with the federal government and Silicon Valley to mandate experimental vaccines, masks, lockdowns, and disastrous school and business closures, dumping 4.6 trillion dollars into the stock market, making the millionaires and billionaires wealthier than ever, leaving the rest of us traumatized, marginalized, polarized and impoverished?

Watch the 14-minute interview: The Great Reset is Real!

VANDANA SHIVA

How We Defeat the Agricultural Great Reset

Russell Brand interviews environmental activist and author, Vandana Shiva. Dr. Shiva explains how the mainstream media have distorted the Dutch Farmer protests, claiming that shutting down small farms utilizing chemical fertilizers is the solution to the environmental and climate crisis. But the global elite, using the rhetoric of a Great Reset, and the strategy of “divide and rule,” are actually carrying out a 21st Century colonial land grab, driving small farmers and ranchers off the land, promising that pesticides, GMOs, lab food, and big data will make us healthy, happy and prosperous. The same elite (anti-nature, anti-people) who have forced a degenerative chemical-intensive factory farm model on farmers (through legislation, subsidies, and manipulating research and markets) are now blaming farmers for the problem. Conventional farmers are a victim of the system, not the cause, while organic and regenerative farmers, conscious consumers, and non-violent resistance are the solution.

We need to build a natural alliance between farmers, activists, and everyday people. “The billionaires have bought the mainstream and social media,” Shiva reminds us, and we must get out the truth and build a new global movement if we aim to overturn the authoritarian and dystopia rule of Bill Gates, Black Rock, Vanguard, Monsanto/Bayer, and the digital technologists.

An economy without people, without farmers. An economy where consumers have no choice over our food, health, and governance is the goal of the big corporations and the billionaires. As Vandana states, the elite are trying to “colonize our minds” make us forget our history, common values, and common sense. “Greenwash, social wash, justice wash,” we need to replace the false rhetoric and technocratic solutions of the global elite, the “pirates and thieves” of the WTO (World Trade Organization), the World Economic Forum, and the corrupt politicians, militarists, and indentured scientists of the Great Reset, who are twisting our ideals and aspirations to divide and control us. We must stand up, refuse to compromise, and build a new consciousness and Movement of Regeneration, which is truly green, organic, healthy, and equitable.

Watch the video: Vandana Shiva: “THIS Is How We Beat The Great Reset"

STOP TOXIC SLUDGE

PFAS “Forever Chemicals” (from Toxic Sewage Sludge and Military Waste), Immunotoxicity, and COVID-19

Toxic sewage sludge applied as a “fertilizer” on agricultural lands is banned on any farm or ranch that is certified as Organic or Biodynamic, and for good reason. If an organic farm is contaminated with PFAS, this is almost always because it was contaminated before it became certified as organic. Read more about this on OCA's Stop Toxic Sludge campaign page.

OCA’s ally, Alliance for Natural Health, warns that there is a “startling connection between PFAS exposure and COVID-19 severity. A study published December 2020 in the journal PLoS, indicates that a specific perfluorinate may increase risk for more severe cases of Covid-19 pneumonia.”

Environmental Health Symposium reports:

“Exposure to PFAS has been correlated with many different health conditions—kidney and testicular cancer, low birth weight, thyroid disease, decreased sperm quality, cancer, thyroid disease, asthma, ulcerative colitis, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, reproductive damage and immunotoxicity. Areas with high levels of perfluorinates in drinking water have shown increased incidence of diabetes, cerebrovascular diseases, myocardial infarction, and Alzheimer’s disease in both sexes and kidney cancer, breast cancer, and Parkinson’s disease in females… A study published December 2020 in the journal PLoS, indicates that a specific perfluorinate may increase risk for more severe cases of Covid-19 pneumonia. ‘It’s probably what’s in the lungs that counts because that’s where the big Covid battle is fought,’ said Philippe Grandjean, the principal author of the study looking at Covid-19 hospitalized patients and their PFAS levels.’

Grandjean’s study involved 323 patients with Covid-19, 215 of whom were hospitalized. The researchers analyzed the blood of these patients for the presence of five PFAS compounds known to be immunotoxic and found that only perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA), was associated with the severity of the disease. More than half of those seriously ill with Covid-19 had elevated PFBA levels in their plasma, while less than 20 percent of those with mild illness had elevated levels of the chemical.”

SYNBIO

Retailers and Organic Advocates Whey In: Are “Animal Free” Dairy Products Really Natural?

OCA’s longtime colleague Steve Hoffman from Compass Natural reports: “Which term do you like better – animal-free dairy, next-gen dairy, cultivated dairy, bio-identical dairy, or parallel dairy? If you preferred “animal-free dairy,” you’re not alone.

Knowing consumer acceptance is key to the success of precision fermentation – a rapidly growing biotechnology that genetically engineers microorganisms such as bacteria and yeast to produce complex molecules, including proteins that mimic those found in meat and dairy products – earlier this year German biotechnology company Formo, along with Fordham University and Mercy for Animals, surveyed consumers in the U.K., Germany, Singapore and the U.S. to ask that very question.

What they found out? While the clear favorite among survey respondents was animal-free dairy (the least favorite was bio-identical dairy and the strange term, parallel dairy), ‘Many wanted to know whether the product was natural or artificial, leading from here into questions of how safe the products would be and what bodily effects it might have, with some looking for data that could answer these questions for them,’ the survey’s authors reported, according to Food Navigator.

While a significant majority of the survey participants responded positively to questions about animal welfare and conventional animal agriculture’s impact on the environment as they were framed in the poll around such ‘animal-free’ dairy products, according to the survey’s findings, a ‘nearly universal’ consumer concern was around precision fermentation’s ‘unbridled meddling with nature,’ and many were worried about ‘eating the unknown.’

Learn more: Retailers Whey In: Are Animal-free Dairy Products Natural?

INTERVIEW

Regenerating Ecosystems and Sequestering Carbon

In this 30-minute video interview with Ben Dobson Steering Committee member of Regeneration International and co-founder of the Hudson Carbon Project (Hudson, NY), American Grassfed Association regenerative rancher Will Harris, and OCA’s Ronnie Cummins, hosted by Alexis Baden-Mayer, we discuss how, on the one hand, most “carbon credits” nowadays have become little more than a greenwashing tool for corporate agribusiness and Wall Street, while on the other hand, Regeneration International, Hudson Carbon, Vía Orgánica (OCA’s sister organization in Mexico) and other groups are building a genuine climate and environmentally regenerative grassroots-based alternative to greenwashing that we call “Ecosystem Service Investments.”

This system of scientifically verifiable carbon offsets or Ecosystem Service Investments, not only operates on the principle of forcing the polluters to pay; but at the same time preserves our forests, wetlands, and above ground plant life; draws down and sequesters large amounts of excess carbon from the atmosphere; restores soil fertility, rainwater retention, and biodiversity, meanwhile paying farmers a fair price ($100 or more per ton of carbon per acre/per year) for carbon sequestered and other environmental services (water conservation, biodiversity, and soil fertility) through organic and regenerative practices.

In other words, instead of just criticizing Wall Street and transnational corporations we encourage/pressure/force them to pay for their pollution, leave carbon reserves in the ground, and pay farmers, indigenous, and rural communities to reverse climate change and global warming though regenerative and organic farming, grazing, and land management practices.

Watch the Interview: Regenerating Ecosystems and the Climate

VICTORY GARDENS

Turning to Gardening in Hard Times

Jennifer Atkinson writes:

“The coronavirus pandemic has set off a global gardening boom. In the early days of lockdown, seed suppliers were depleted of inventory and reported “unprecedented” demand. Within the U.S., the trend has been compared to World War II victory gardening, when Americans grew food at home to support the war effort and feed their families.

The analogy is surely convenient. But it reveals only one piece in a much bigger story about why people garden in hard times. Americans have long turned to the soil in moments of upheaval to manage anxieties and imagine alternatives. My research has even led me to see gardening as a hidden landscape of desire for belonging and connection; for contact with nature; and for creative expression and improved health.”

SUPPORT THE OCA, RI & CRL

Invest in the Great Organic Reset

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From all of us at OCA, Regeneration International, and Via Organica, a heartfelt thank you for sticking to your ideals in these difficult times.

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PODCAST

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