Unfortunately, both Democratic and Republican politicians in the U.S. appear to have lost touch with reality and the needs of everyday working class, middle class, low-income, and rural communities. America’s political duopoly appears hell-bent on demonizing “the other party” for partisan gain meanwhile working full-time for their respective donors in the billionaire class, with their primary paymasters coming from corporate agribusiness, Big Pharma, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the fossil fuels industry, and the military-industrial complex.

With Establishment Democrats and Republicans continuing to discredit themselves, Trumpers and Progressives alike, it’s time for a new grassroots rising. It’s time for a game-changing grassroots-powered politics based upon Regeneration, rather than “business as usual” and “politics as usual.”

OCA and our allies believe that a global awakening and Grassroots Rising, based upon the principles and practices of regenerative food, farming, and land-use, has the awesome potential to inspire and provoke a multi-partisan, multinational, populist Movement—Democrat, Independent, and Republican; liberal, radical, conservative, and libertarian; rancher, farmer, and indigenous; urban and rural; consumer and farmer; North and South.

Over the past decade, Mexican government officials, heeding the concerns of civil society and responding to the evermore obvious crises of the environment, climate, food, farming, forced migration, public health, and rural poverty, have issued a number of official proclamations with potentially major positive impact.

These official proclamations have included:

1. The signing of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and the complementary 4 for 1000 “Soils for Climate” pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly and to offset the nation’s carbon footprint by scaling up agroecological and regenerative practices in agriculture, forest management, and soil health so as to drawdown and store excess atmospheric CO2 in the nation’s soil, trees, and biota, preserving biodiversity and improving rural and indigenous economic livelihoods at the same time.
2. On December 31, 2020, Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador issued a decree announcing the phase -out by 2024  of Monsanto/Bayer’s toxic herbicide glyphosate, and a corresponding phase-out of the importation of genetically engineered corn from the U.S., used mainly in livestock feed, despite strong protests by Monsanto, the U.S. government, and the industrial agribusiness lobby.
3. An announcement made by the Mexican Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources in 2021 that the central dynamic for Mexico’s agriculture should be based upon agroecological principles and practices, instead of conventional chemical-intensive, fossil-fuel intensive, export-oriented, GMO farming practices.

Given the magnitude of the current crisis, we at OCA believe we need to expand our redemptive message of Regeneration to encompass, not only the next stage of organic food and farming and land use, but also our political policies and practices. We must step up our efforts, not only championing organic food and farming, but international peace and economic justice, civil liberties, participatory democracy, and regenerating health, both mental and physical. In the midst of political corruption and opportunism, media censorship and fear-mongering, it’s essential to focus on positive ideas and solutions.