Essays
I’ve just returned from an inspirational trip to India. I went on this journey (which my fellow traveler, Vandana Shiva, refers to as a “soil pilgrimage”) to celebrate the International Year of the Soil.
But I also undertook this journey to see firsthand what many Indian farmers are up against.
And also because I believe that the crises we face today—hunger, poverty, chronic illness, drought, floods—demand that we come up with solutions that we can adapt to every region of the world, and execute on a global scale.
Tomorrow is World Food Day. It is also the day we will publicly launch, in conjunction with other international leaders and organizations, a new project: Regeneration International.
The world needs a message of hope. It's here. It's right under your feet.
The Monsanto public relations machine has done a stellar job in recent years of reducing the GMO debate to one that pits “pro-science advocates” against “anti-science climate-denier types”—with Monsanto portrayed as being squarely planted in the pro-science camp.
But that well-oiled machine may be starting to sputter.
Turns out that a Monsanto executive solicited pro-GMO articles from university researchers, and passed the “research” off as independent science which the biotech giant then used to prop up its image and further its agenda.
We know this, thanks to thousands of pages of emails obtained by US Right to Know, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And because a host of news outlets—including the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Bloomberg, the StarPhoenix and others—are now running with the story.
Something is going to happen. If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.
So we were told recently by a Senate staffer, during one of the many meetings we’ve held with Senators to urge them to reject H.R. 1599, or what we refer to as the DARK—Deny Americans the Right to Know—Act.
Could that comment mean Monsanto is cooking up another “sneak attack,” similar to the one it conducted in 2013, that led to passage of the Monsanto Protection Act? Only this time, the sneak attack would be aimed at stomping out the GMO labeling movement?
It wouldn’t surprise us. A quick look at the lay of the land reveals that Monsanto and Big Food have several opportunities to rush the DARK Act into law, without a hearing or a full vote in the Senate.
How likely is that to happen? The jury is still out. But this much we know: Monsanto and Big Food are nothing if not opportunists.
On August 27 (2015), we published an action alert asking consumers to ask Burt’s Bees to cut ties with the corporations that make neonicotinoid pesticides. Neonics are a class of pesticides implicated in the mass die-off of honeybees.
We also asked that instead of supporting research (through the Pollinator Partnership) on other causes of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), or research on alternative pesticides, Burt’s Bees use its corporate clout to demand that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ban the use of neonics.
Our action alert prompted an angry phone call from the executive director of the Pollinator Partnership. Burt’s Bees also responded, by setting up an auto-reply email (which many of you received) defending the brand’s participation in the Pollinator Partnership, and insisting that the Burt’s Bees brand is dedicated to protecting pollinators.
We stand by the alert, which as of September 7, had generated almost 18,000 emails to Burt’s Bees. Here’s why.
Welcome to Degeneration Nation. After decades of self-destructive business-as-usual, we’ve reached a new low, physically and morally.
Distracted by know-nothing media conglomerates and betrayed by cowardly politicians and avaricious corporations, homo sapiens are facing, and unfortunately in many cases still denying, the most serious existential threat in our 200,000 year evolution—catastrophic climate change. Unless we move decisively as a global community to transform our degenerative food, farming and energy systems, we are doomed.
To reverse global warming and restabilize the climate, we will need not only to slash CO2 emissions by 90 percent or more, taking down King Coal and Big Oil and converting to renewable sources of energy, but we must also simultaneously remove or draw down 100-150 ppm of the excess (400 ppm) CO2 and greenhouse gases that are already overheating our supersaturated atmosphere. How do we accomplish the latter? Through regenerative agriculture and land use.
Fortunately, this is possible because more and more consumers are connecting the dots between what’s on their dinner plates and what’s happening to Planet Earth. They, along with environmentalists, animal rights, food justice, climate and health activists, have created a global grassroots movement aimed at dismantling our destructive, degenerative industrial food and farming system. And despite Big Food’s desperate attempts to maintain the status quo, this powerful movement is escalating the war on degeneration.
Avian Flu ravaged industrial poultry farms this year, especially in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. In all, about 200 farms in 15 states were affected by this year’s outbreak, costing U.S. egg and poultry exporters more than $380 million, said the Poultry & Egg Export Council.
The outbreak was no picnic for the birds, either. In Iowa, 30 million hens and 1.5 million turkeys were euthanized because of the H5N2 virus. Nationwide, the flu killed about 50 million birds
Avian Flu affects poultry farm workers, who lose their jobs. And consumers, who pay more for eggs.
Is the solution to develop and use more vaccines?
Definitely not, says Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, COO of the Main Street Project, a large-scale organic regenerative poultry project. Haslett-Marroquin argues that we should focus more on prevention, and less on a cure. That means replacing today’s poultry factory farms with an alternative organic, regenerative model, where healthier birds, with healthier immune systems are—unlike their unfortunate feathered friends in factory farms—able to resist disease.
It turns out that when it comes to Avian Flu, we haven’t been asking the right question, which is: Which came first? The diseased chicken? Or the chicken disease?
Where profits alone count, there can be no thinking about the rhythms of nature, its phases of decay and regeneration, or the complexity of ecosystems which may be gravely upset by human intervention…. It is not enough to balance, in the medium term, the protection of nature with financial gain, or the preservation of the environment with progress. Halfway measures simply delay the inevitable disaster. - Pope Francis, Papal Encyclical “Laudato Si,” June 18, 2015
A growing number of climate, food, environment, health and justice advocates are embracing and promoting a world-changing concept: regeneration.
What is regeneration? And why are a so many public figures, including Pope Francis, calling for regeneration or revolution, rather than “halfway measures” such as sustainability or mitigation?
OCA National Director, Ronnie Cummins, answers these questions. He also warns that there will be no organic food, nor food whatsoever, on a burnt planet. Nor will there ever be a 90-percent reduction in greenhouse gas pollution without a transformation of our food and farming and land use practices, both in North America and globally.
‘If governments won’t solve the climate, hunger, health, and democracy crises, then the people will.‘ - Dr.Vandana Shiva, speaking at the founding meeting of Regeneration International, La Fortuna de San Carlos, Costa Rica, June 8, 2015
When literally billions of people, the 99 percent, are hungry or struggling to survive with justice and dignity; when the majority of the global body politic are threatened and assaulted by a toxic environment and food system; when hundreds of millions are overwhelmed with chronic health problems; battered by floods, droughts, and weather extremes; when endless wars and land grabs for water, land and strategic resources spiral out of control; When indentured politicians, corporations and the mass media conspire to stamp out the last vestiges of democracy in order to force a “Business-as-Usual” paradigm down our throats, it’s time for a change, Big Change.
It’s time to move beyond degenerate ethics, farming land use, energy policies, politics and economics. It’s time to move beyond “too little, too late” mitigation and sustainability strategies.
It’s time to inspire and mobilize a mighty global army of Regenerators, before it’s too late.
Editor’s note: This article was written at the request of USA Today, which published it as an “opposing view” on May 17, 2015. USA Today took the same position as most of the rest of the corporate media, which is that by providing a product that consumers want, the restaurant chain is “pandering to ignorance.”
Since when does the mainstream media, in a country that worships at the altar of capitalism and the free market, launch a coordinated attack against a company for selling a product consumers want?
When that company dares to cross the powerful biotech industry. How else to explain the unprecedented negative coverage aimed at Chipotle’s, merely because the successful restaurant chain will eliminate GMO foods from its menu?
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