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organic farming
Resistance Under Pressure: the Colombian Peace Community of San José de Apartadó
The South American country is being terrorized by brutal paramilitaries. A small community has consistently practised nonviolence—now they have received death threats again.
Dec 22, 2024
Nature is loud. Unknown animal sounds resound from the darkness as I work on the veranda in the evening. Everything seems so peaceful while the Comunidad de Paz reports the presence of armed people near their private properties La Roncona and La Holandecita. This is exactly where our small women's delegation from Europe is staying—Sabine Lichtenfels, Andrea Phoebe Regelmann, Katharina Müller and I—in the first house after the entrance gate.
Outside our terrace, the lavish abundance of nature. Lush greenery, with the occasional free-roaming horse or chicken on the lawn. There is a latent threat in the air, but not to our lives. The threatened people of the community have learned to live with the daily danger. They occasionally come to visit us, still have a sense of humor, and radiate from within. They have been friends with my fellow travelers from the partner community Tamera in southern Portugal for 19 years. Our presence and reporting on them gives them protection, because the murderers cover up their crimes and attack when no international witness is looking.
Colombia is in utter chaos. The more I hear and read about what is happening here, the more I immerse myself in books about the country, the more perplexed, confused, and disillusioned I remain. According to The System of the Bird: Colombia, a Laboratory of Barbarity by Guido Piccoli, "Violence has not left Colombia since the war of independence against the Spanish." In Colombia, "there is always room for everyone, but equally the possibility of killing each other to no end."
Piccoli writes:
Don Gonzalo was not only a good person, he was also a hard worker. He got up at dawn and went to the mountains of Norcasia to cut down trees. One morning, his sister did not bring him his lunch, as she did every day. When Gonzalo came home, he found her dead, tied to a post. They had raped her. In the courtyard lay the decapitated bodies of his two brothers, while the bodies of their parents were lying in the hallway of the house. The only one still alive was the youngest brother. Before he died in his arms, he was able to tell him that the bandits were responsible for the massacre. From that day on, Don Gonzales decided to cut off the heads of bandits.
I can't say who the bandits are here. Paramilitaries, military, guerrillas. The state, the police, the public prosecutor's office. According to the law and the Constitution, the country is a democracy. In practice, hardly anyone understands how it works, and criminals enjoy complete impunity. During a riot in 1948 in the capital Bogotá, after the socialist politician and lawyer Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was murdered, "in one neighborhood in the center of the city, police distributed weapons to the demonstrators. In other neighbourhoods, they shot at them with rifles"
Initially, both the Colombians and American diplomats believed that Gaitán was assassinated by the Conservative Party, but after a few years, the opinion emerged that this was the first plot organized by the CIA, which had only been founded seven months earlier, to curb the spread of communism in the U.S. sphere of influence. Even the world-famous author Gabriel García Márquez supported this theory, because he was in the area on the day of the assassination and saw a conspicuous, unusual man, but no authority investigated this murder further and the FBI refused to open its archives "for security reasons."
Violence in Colombia only got worse from there. People were being sawed in half, had their eyes gouged out, had body parts cut off—all while they were still alive. Then the bodies were dumped in some villages. The terror was intended to force entire communities to leave their land.
The beneficiaries were the country's oligarchs, large landowners, and North American corporations:
The paramilitaries in Colombia are the armed wing of the elites, supported by or interwoven with all state authorities, at all levels of government and in all social classes. They were formed with the help of the Colombian army, several Colombian and U.S. intelligence services, and mercenaries. Paramilitarism is a strategic project and an integral part of the state. The paramilitaries play a central role in enforcing a capitalist neoliberal economic and social model with enormous profit margins.
All of this happened a long time ago. A peace agreement was signed in 2016, and a truth commission was set up as a result. The current left-wing government of Gustavo Petro is working to implement these milestones in Colombian history and is committed to the vision of "total peace." And here I am, surrounded by tropical abundance, struggling against a feeling of hopelessness as I realize how deeply violence and murder have shaped the lives of every person I talk to, and especially how murder and torture are still widespread. Most of the guerrillas have been demobilised, while the paramilitaries are stronger than before.
On March 18, 2024, President Petro visited the nearby town of "Apartadó and spoke—for the first time for a president—words of recognition and reparation for the Comunidad de Paz. The next day, the paramilitary responded—at least that is how the Comunidad De Paz understands it: 30-year-old Nalleley, mother of three, and 14-year-old Edinson were brutally murdered." The Urabá region, where the peace community is located, is under the control of the Gulf Clan, the most powerful criminal syndicate in Colombia. It emerged from right-wing paramilitaries and now, perfidiously, has renamed itself the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia after Gaitán in order to give itself a political coloring.
On our porch, over coffee and buñuelos, various members of the Peace Village describe how it felt when they lost family members in massacres by paramilitaries. They take an empty bowl in their hands to illustrate the inner emptiness that this leaves in them. And now comes the part that makes this place so special: They do not react like Don Gonzales and want revenge, and they no longer allow themselves to be driven out, uprooted in dignity, to beg for work in the cities. Since 1997, they have declared their neutrality, practiced organic farming for their own sustenance, exemplified nonviolence, and thus practiced the only possible form of resistance, namely collective resistance against war, expulsion, and exploitation. The integrity of these people is incredible.
"Their profound and courageous stance of nonviolence, ethical integrity, reconciliation, and community building, despite suffering unending attacks and massacres, has turned them into an important reference and role model for many other resisting grassroots communities in Colombia," writes Martin Winiecki from Tamera, who has also visited them several times.
I am learning a lot here. Above all, about the great fight against the system of exploitation, which always takes place on a small scale, especially in our minds. And the people here, with all the threats and the very simple life on the brink of poverty, seem more alive and, paradoxically, more radiant than my European friends. An excess of prosperity and the lack of a purpose in life seem to me more and more like enemies of vitality. On the outside, neoliberalism is destroying the Earth and on the inside, it is destroying our souls.
Amid the huge plants, the free-roaming animals, the women, men, and children who move around on foot or by horse and mule to reach their lands up in the mountains, where there is still no civilization, I feel closer to life than ever. My soul, buried by our consumer world, suddenly breathes life here, as if a layer of dust has been blown away. And it is precisely from this "civilization" that the Comunidad de Paz protects its land, protecting it and itself from the grip of the mega-machine.
"What's happening in Colombia of course isn't an isolated phenomenon," Winiecki writes. "It's part of an intensifying global clash: empire versus communities, capitalism versus Earth, patriarchy versus Life. This clash plays out in the ever more heartbreaking genocide in Gaza, the accelerating climate breakdown, the rise of far-right authoritarianism and fascism, and more. For life to succeed, we need unbreakable solidarity, recognizing that all struggles are connected, and we also need the power of vision that enables us to create living alternatives."
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The USDA and Corrupt Organic Certifiers Are Betraying Farmers and Consumers
Corporate agribusinesses are playing fast and loose with the rules by choosing friendly compliant certifiers—and when they are caught in the act, the USDA often fails to take action.
Oct 13, 2024
Some of the oldest and largest U.S. Department of Agriculture-accredited certifiers have partnered with corporate agribusiness to change the working definition of organics, allowing large livestock factories; certified, uninspected imports; and soilless hydroponic produce grown in giant industrial greenhouses to be certified organic.
Organic certifiers are mixing lobbying, marketing, and activism with their certification responsibilities, and taking payola from the clients they certify. They are also certifying “producer groups” in Eastern Europe, Central America, and Asia without inspecting and certifying each individual farm.
This is against the law and an egregious conflict of interest—and it’s crushing U.S. farmers in the marketplace while raking in billions of dollars in profit for these large certifiers.
The corrupt practices employed by these certifiers have left authentic organic farmers, who focus on sound soil stewardship and humane animal husbandry based on pasture, highly disadvantaged in the marketplace.
In 1990, Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), tasking the USDA with oversight of dozens of certifiers to ensure their independence and harmonization of standards.
Fast forward to today and the USDA is now allowing a handful of the largest certifiers to collude with corporate agribusiness to industrialize or import the organic food supply at the expense of high standards and the livelihoods of U.S. farmers who adhere to them.
As executive director of OrganicEye, an organic industry watchdog, I’ve witnessed family-scale organic farmers who abide by the USDA’s organic standards get crushed in the marketplace by dubious organic imports allowed into the U.S. without the certification or inspection that federal law requires.
In September, OrganicEye requested that the USDA Office of Inspector General investigate the National Organic Program for failing to prevent corporate influence—including financial payments made to certifiers over and above inspection fees—and failing to enforce other USDA regulations that prevent conflicts of interest, thus lowering the quality of certified organic food.
OrganicEye recently filed a third formal legal complaint against a certifier, Florida Organic Growers (FOG), and their certification arm, Quality Certification Services (QCS), for accepting contributions, conference sponsorships, and other payments over and above certification fees from operations they oversee.
FOG has joined two of the other largest “independent” certifiers in the country, California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) and Oregon Tilth, in selling out hard-working produce and livestock farmers by certifying giant industrial operations, many allegedly flagrantly breaking the law. Legal complaints against all three are currently pending.
When money changes hands between agribusiness clients and the profiting organizations that certify them, we call that “payola,” classically defined as corruption. These certifiers are acting as agents of the USDA. And the regulators in Washington responsible for auditing them are looking the other way.
Large organic certifiers should not be partnering with corporate agribusiness and cashing in on the growth of organics, especially while other certifiers are upholding the traditionally high standards.
In its first action to reign in certification abuses, OrganicEye filed an administrative law complaint against CCOF, the nation’s largest certifier, in November 2023 to address this out-of-control certification system.
We’ve seen organizations like CCOF, Oregon Tilth, and FOG morph from being among the founding farmer-led groups facilitating the growth of organic farming in the U.S. to multimillion-dollar business enterprises certifying multibillion-dollar corporate agribusinesses.
Recent IRS filings show these certification giants have reaped tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue while “masquerading” as tax-exempt public charities, with the vast preponderance of income derived from service fees paid by their business clients.
In addition to the controversies surrounding certification of livestock factories, a number of prominent certifiers, along with the industry’s primary lobby group, the Organic Trade Association, executed a stealthy campaign in 2017 that resulted in regulators allowing mammoth hydroponic greenhouses (soilless production) to be certified as organic, despite statutory and regulatory language requiring careful soil stewardship before a farm can be certified as organic under the USDA program.
That rich, organically-curated soil microbiome is the foundation of organic farming practices, resulting in superior nutrition density and flavor. That’s lacking in hydroponics, which uses liquid fertilizers derived from materials like conventional soybean meal.
The corrupt practices employed by these certifiers have left authentic organic farmers, who focus on sound soil stewardship and humane animal husbandry based on pasture, highly disadvantaged in the marketplace. With many small organic farms struggling economically—and hundreds more being forced out altogether—the devastating impacts are clear.
It doesn’t have to be this way. And not all certifiers are behaving badly.
For example, Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association is universally viewed as one of the most ethical certifiers. They do not approve hydroponic greenhouses or factory farms as organic.
Since OrganicEye began publishing its research concerning alleged improprieties at the nation’s largest certifiers, we have received numerous inquiries from farmers indicating interest in switching certifiers.
We hope that our research inspires ethical farmers and certified organic business operations to consider switching their allegiance and economic patronage to certifiers who share their values and interpretations of federal law.
In the meantime, consumers and eaters can use the same guide that we have prepared for farmers to help identify some of the most creditable organic food in the marketplace. Federal law requires every package with the word “organic” on the front label to include the name of the certifier supervising the production process. This is commonly found on the back or side panel near the ingredient list.
With the USDA delegating so much authority to certifiers, there are now effectively two organic labels: corporate brands affiliated with OTA lobbyists and certified by their members, motivated by profit and industry growth, and other ethical brands that have not lost touch with the foundational precepts of the organic movement.
OrganicEye is offering free consulting and other resources to farmers around the country who are switching their patronage to certifiers who share their values rather than undercutting their livelihoods.
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“Vegetarian”…Why Not “Planetarian”?
Only with democracy—specifically a living democracy—can we transform our wasteful, destructive food system to ensure everyone’s fair access to healthy, ecologically grown food.
May 22, 2023
"Planetarian. What’s that?”
I am eager to explain. In the late sixties, as I struggled to find my path, Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb had just exploded, admonishing humanity for overpopulating the Earth and creating food scarcity. Soon, several friends even pledged never to have kids.
So, I had to know: Was Ehrlich right?
I dug in at U.C. Berkeley’s agricultural library with my dad’s slide rule in hand, asking: Is it true that we’re running out of food?
No. Emphatically no, I soon learned.
We did then—and do now—produce enough food for all. Yet decade after decade we turn abundance into scarcity for too many: Today, 1.3 billion people—1 in 6 of us—lack consistent access to the calories we need. And safe and healthy diets? They’re out of reach for almost 40 percent of humanity, and the crisis is predicted to worsen.
Why?
Simply put, our world’s gross power inequities—political and economic—are the root cause. As the richest 1 percent control about half the world’s wealth, food policies serve elite interests, not commonsense or our planet’s health.
When our dietary habits incorporate environmental, justice, and health awareness as well as animal welfare, might we be "planetarians"?
One result? Staggering inefficiency.
Humans directly eat only about half the calories we produce. And the other half? While some become biofuel, in the U.S. we devote three-fourths of agricultural land to livestock production. And, of every 100 feed calories that cows eat, we get only three calories back in that burger or steak on our plate. With dairy cows, we get less than half the calories they’re fed.
The big picture?
Worldwide, almost 80 percent of our agricultural land produces livestock that give us only 18 percent of our calories.
Other costs include vast environmental harms: Producing animal foods generates greenhouse gas emissions 10 to 60 times greater than producing plant-based foods. Plus, 60 percent of biodiversity loss worldwide is caused by livestock. Moreover, livestock grazing is responsible for almost 40 percent of global deforestation, worsening the climate and biodiversity crises. Natural historian David Attenborough warns us we are facing the 6th great species extinction, which requires a dietary shift toward plant food.
Plus, “industrialized livestock” generate 85 percent of soil erosion, also a major threat.
Next, water. Our heating climate diminishes fresh water supplies; yet to produce just one pound of beef we use 1,800 gallons of water. Globally, “animal agriculture” accounts for nearly a fifth of all freshwater use. Here in the U.S. cattle farming uses more than half the water drawn from the Colorado River, for example, even as area’s current water crisis already threatens many farms and puts dozens of fish species at risk.
Meat-centered diets also directly damage our health: In 2015, the WHO declared red meat a probable carcinogen and processed meat a carcinogen.
In sharp contrast, plant-centered diets have been shown to lower body weight, boost the immune system, and decrease cancer risk, coronary heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes. So, no surprise: A plant-centered diet is associated with “lower risk of all-cause mortality” in U.S. adults.
It makes no sense. Why would we humans—supposedly the brightest species—actively shrink our food supply?
Why?
Because the deeper scarcity we’ve failed to address is that of democracy. On political rights and civil liberties, Freedom House—confounded by Eleanor Roosevelt—ranks us way behind nations we think of as peers. The U.S. comes in 59th between Panama and Samoa. Yet, only with democracy can we transform our wasteful, destructive food system to ensure everyone’s fair access to healthy, ecologically grown food.
Thus, much of my life energies have gone toward what I call “living democracy” in which we each have both economic and political power.
So, how does shifting my diet serve democracy?
In nourishing ourselves we make multiple choices daily. That alone gives food special power. With each choice I know I am sending signals back through the food chain for sane, fair use of our Earth.
Suddenly, my every bite has delicious purpose. As a vegetarian, I’ve loved knowing I was protecting animals and avoiding massive waste. But now I wonder whether “vegetarian” captures the full impact of such food choices. So, what if we reconceive good eating as not just “plant-based,” but “planet-healing”?
When our dietary habits incorporate environmental, justice, and health awareness as well as animal welfare, might we be "planetarians"?
I believe that with every step aligning our lives with our deepest truths, we become more convincing to ourselves and thus to others—and more likely to take our next step and the next…with ever greater courage. And that’s exactly what our planet needs now more than ever.
So, “planetarian” feels great.
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Climate Policy's on Shaky Ground in the Farm Bill
As the struggle against fossil fuels carries on in our states and communities, the quest for serious action in Washington on climate and ecological renewal will focus largely on the national push for a radically new kind of Farm Bill.
Mar 19, 2023
Members of Congress have begun drafting the 2023 "Farm Bill," and they’ll be wrangling over it through most of the year. This legislation, passed into law anew every fifth year or so since the 1930s, has had far-reaching influence on food and farming in the United States. Each version of the bill is given its own name; the previous one, for example, was called the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018. Given the nature of the early debate over this bill-in-the-making, it might end up deserving to be called the Food and Climate Bill of 2023.
Over the next two years, any legislation explicitly aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions will be dead on arrival in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. By default, the Farm Bill may now be the playing field for the only climate game in town, according to Washington-watchers such as Peter Lehner, who represents the group Earthjustice. He told Politico last month, “The farm bill is probably going to be the piece of legislation in the next two years with the biggest impact on the climate and the environment.”
Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act beefed up several of the Farm Bill’s climate-related conservation programs to the tune of an additional $20 billion. And the Washington Post has reported that a task force of more than 80 “climate-conscious House Democrats” is working to further extend the bill’s green impact, with additional protection for existing forests; planting of new stands of trees; conservation of soil, water, and biodiversity; and research on protecting crops against climatic disasters, including drought.
Meanwhile, March 6–8, a coalition of 20 sustainable ag and farmworker groups under the banner Farmers for Climate Action held a “Rally for Resilience” in D.C. Their message: “The next Farm Bill needs to explicitly empower farmers to address climate change, by providing resources, assistance, and incentives that will allow them to lead the way in implementing proven climate solutions.”
Climate politics get dirtier
Because there are farmers and ag-related industries in every state, whether red, blue, or purple, Farm Bills routinely pass with broad bipartisan support. It’s typical, therefore, for Congress members representing rural red states to make common cause with those who represent populous blue states with big ag economies, such as California, Illinois, and Michigan. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly “food stamps”) and the Women’s, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition program also are parts of the Farm Bill, further extending its political base of support.
Controversy arises nonetheless, most often in debates over the bill’s conservation provisions. Agribusiness, for example, often sees protection of soil, air, water, and biodiversity in rural areas as detracting from or interfering with the Farm Bill’s focus on boosting production of the major commodity crops and keeping food prices low. And now that climate action is increasingly finding a home in the conservation section, pushback from the right has increased.
The chair of the House Agriculture Committee, G. T. Thompson (R-PA) has vowed to minimize climate policy in this year’s Farm Bill, while cutting other conservation programs in favor of traditional industry-friendly spending. According to EENews, “Some Republicans are eyeing the farm bill as a chance to redirect climate money to other agriculture programs, such as crop subsidies, while other conservative lawmakers want across-the-board spending cuts.” The hardliners may even try to rescind the $20 billion for climate mitigation that the Inflation Reduction Act has directed toward the Farm Bill.
Climate denial is alive and well in Congress. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA), who now chairs the conservation subcommittee of the ag committee, told Politico, somewhat fuzzily, that “CO2 is not responsible. Especially American-produced CO2, I mean we’re a tiny part of the whole thing.” Rep. John Boozman (R-AR) is trying to divert attention to just about any remotely ag-related issue that doesn’t involve climate protection. Pointing his colleagues toward a couple of favorite targets of right-wing hostility, he has called for investigations into the purchase of U.S. farmland by Chinese interests and for cuts in SNAP benefits to low-income families. Meanwhile, five House members led by Matt Gaetz (R-FL) got even meaner, with a letter to President Biden urging him to “enact work requirements” for SNAP recipients.
Feed people, not steers and SUVs
Farm Bill debates are often complex, technical, and littered with clumsy acronyms, commodity-market arcana, and bureaucratic jargon. Only the nerdiest Congress-watchers have the attention span and patience to go deep enough into the weeds (literally, in some parts of the bill) to understand what it’s all about. Even in Congress, only a minority of members and staff have solid familiarity with the issues. This year, nearly half the members of the House of Representatives have almost zero Farm Bill experience, as they were not in office during the last debate, five years ago. But with climate at the center of this year’s debate, members on both sides of the aisle, whether well-schooled in ag issues or not, are now wading into the fray.
Most of the policies that are needed to flip U.S. agriculture’s climate impact from deleterious to beneficial are good and necessary in their own right. Even if there were no climate emergency, the nation should be adopting agricultural policies that, along with cutting emissions, can improve soil health; prevent erosion and water pollution; curb the ongoing wipeout of biodiversity; and prevent agriculture from further disrupting the global nitrogen and phosphorous cycles.
The first step would be to stop doing things that not only generate greenhouse-gas emissions but also wreak ecological havoc of other sorts. If you don’t mind taking just a few steps into those weeds with me for a moment, I’d like to cite scientists at the University of Georgia and the University of New Mexico who have argued convincingly for deep cuts in the production of fuel ethanol and meat—especially grain-fed beef—actions that, they show, could achieve the greatest reductions of fossil energy use (and therefore of greenhouse gas emissions) in agriculture. The quantity of energy contained in the fossil fuels used to produce feed grains for cattle exceeds by an order of magnitude the amount of energy contained in the beef that’s produced by those cattle and sold. And the production and delivery of fuel ethanol, from the cornfield to the gas pump, requires as much or more energy (mostly from fossil fuels) as the ethanol will supply to a vehicle’s engine.
Beef and ethanol also have a broad range of other disastrous environmental impacts.
Therefore, the most effective action Congress could take is to stop using the Farm Bill’s conservation funds to support these and other ecologically harmful, climate-busting agricultural practices. For example, the 2018 Farm Bill supported one such practice: confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), such as cattle feedlots and factory farms for swine and poultry. These super-polluting facilities have deeply negative impacts on both local environments and the global climate. The 2023 bill should end all support for CAFOs. And rather than pursue the expansion of ethanol production, as the Department of Agriculture is requesting, Congress should flush ethanol completely out of ag policy.
We can’t get there with annual crops
Agriculture generates only 11 percent of total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, so reducing emissions from the farm sector, important as it is, can go only so far toward driving total U.S. emissions toward zero quickly and steeply. However, unlike other sectors of the economy, farming also has the potential to help mitigate climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through nature’s preferred method of carbon sequestration: photosynthesis.
To use U.S. farmlands and forests as reservoirs for atmospheric carbon would help to reverse a massive loss of soil carbon that began long before the age of mechanized agriculture. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, native grasslands and forestlands across North America were plowed up to make way for corn, wheat, cotton, and other annual crops—replacing vast, biodiverse, perennial ecosystems with plantings of annual monocultures. Extensive root systems, alive year-round, were killed off across hundreds of millions of acres, to be replaced by the sparser, ephemeral root systems of crops that had to be resown with every growing season. For much of the year, there were now only spindly seedling roots or no living roots at all to support the soil ecosystems that had thrived before the arrival of the plow. Consequently, over subsequent decades, countless tons of carbon that had been captured by plants over millions of years went back up into the atmosphere.
Accumulating enough carbon in the soil to mitigate climate change effectively will require switching from annual to perennial crops across most of U.S. farm country, to get soils even part way back to their robust state. Fortunately, the necessity for perennial agriculture is being expressed more widely in this year’s Farm Bill discussion than in previous years, with both the scientific community and grassroots climate and sustainable-agriculture groups calling for more perennial farming systems.
For example, a coalition called Farm Bill Law Enterprise, “a national partnership of law school programs working toward a farm bill that reflects the long-term needs of our society,” is arguing that perennial agriculture must be one of the highest priorities in the 2023 bill. In its report, titled simply, “Climate and Conservation,” the group pushes for perennial forage crops; interplanting of tree crops with annual crops; “forest farming and multi-story cropping”; perennial fruits and vegetables; and perennial cereals, grain legumes, and oilseeds. The group goes on to urge more funding for research and development of perennial agriculture in the U.S. Department of Agriculture itself, especially on grain crops, and for “research on the economic and social conditions critical to development of perennial agriculture systems and markets.”
Needed: A fifty-year Farm Bill
Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture by ditching products such as fuel ethanol and grain-fed beef would mesh nicely with the use of perennial crops to capture more atmospheric carbon and store more of it in living roots deep in the soil. If U.S. farmers were to stop producing the bazillions of bushels of corn and soybeans that go into feeding cattle and biofuel plants, tens of millions of acres would be newly available for growing perennial range, hay, and pasture crops. From those, more modest quantities of grass-fed beef and dairy products could be produced. And each year, more and more of the lands liberated from annual feed grains could be sown to perennial food-grain crops.
Wes Jackson and Fred Kirschenmann envisioned this sort of grand transition in their proposal for a “Fifty-Year Farm Bill” in 2009. But at the time, the breeding of perennial food-grain crops (which would be necessary to achieve that last step in the transition) was just getting started. That process is now well underway.
Over the past two decades, efforts to domesticate and breed perennial grain-producing crops have progressed from their beginnings at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas (where I work), to be taken up by research networks worldwide. These networks now include more than 50 researchers across North America and five other continents, and solid results are emerging. Development of perennial wheat is accelerating. A perennial cousin of wheat known as Kernza® is under pilot production in the U.S. Plains, the upper Midwest, and Europe. Highly productive perennial rice varieties are being grown on tens of thousands of acres in China and on a smaller scale in East Africa as well. Breeding and ecological work are continuing, with perennial food legumes and perennial grain sorghum under development, in addition to the wheat and rice.
* * *
The need to start a precipitous phase-out of oil, gas, and coal is more acute than ever, but federal legislation will remain out of reach as long as there’s a climate-hostile House majority. So, as the struggle against fossil fuels carries on in our states and communities, the quest for serious action in Washington on climate and ecological renewal will focus largely on the national push for a radically new kind of Farm Bill.
It is essential both to purge fossil fuels and to perennialize agriculture. No two policies are more crucial to preventing ecological meltdown.
The original version of this article was published by City Lights Books as part of their ‘In Real Time’ series and appears at Common Dreams with permission.
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'Huge Win for Organic Farmers' as USDA Files Long-Sought Rule to Prevent Fraud
One advocate said the rule change "will help tighten the national organic system to ensure organic integrity and better protect American organic farmers and confidence in the organic seal."
Jan 18, 2023
Organic farming advocates on Wednesday cheered the United States Department of Agriculture's publication of new regulations aimed at stamping out "organic fraud" in supply chains.
The Strengthening Organic Enforcement (SOE) amendments to the USDA's National Organic Program (NOP)—a federal regulatory program that enforces national standards for organically produced agricultural products—is meant to "strengthen oversight and enforcement of the production, handling, and sale of organic agricultural products" in the United States, according to a federal memo published Wednesday.
"Organic farmers have consistently ranked National Organic Program enforcement and stopping import fraud as a top priority," Kate Mendenhall, executive director of the Organic Farmers Association and an Iowa organic farmer, said in a statement. "U.S. organic farmers and consumers will both benefit from a quick and strong implementation of the SOE rule. We are glad to see it published before the beginning of writing the next farm bill. This is a huge win for organic farmers."
USDA says the new regulations—which will take effect on March 20 and be fully implemented within a year—"protect integrity in the organic supply chain and build consumer and industry trust in the USDA organic label by strengthening organic control systems, improving farm-to-market traceability, and providing robust enforcement of the USDA organic regulations."
The agency continued:
Topics addressed in this rulemaking include: applicability of the regulations and exemptions from organic certification; National Organic Program Import Certificates; recordkeeping and product traceability; certifying agent personnel qualifications and training; standardized certificates of organic operation; unannounced on-site inspections of certified operations; oversight of certification activities; foreign conformity assessment systems; certification of producer group operations; labeling of nonretail containers; annual update requirements for certified operations; compliance and appeals processes; and calculating organic content of multi-ingredient products.
"Protecting and growing the organic sector and the trusted USDA organic seal is a key part of the USDA Food Systems Transformation initiative," USDA Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Jenny Lester Moffitt said in a statement.
"The Strengthening Organic Enforcement rule is the biggest update to the organic regulations since the original act in 1990, providing a significant increase in oversight and enforcement authority to reinforce the trust of consumers, farmers, and those transitioning to organic production," she added. "This success is another demonstration that USDA fully stands behind the organic brand."
Oren Holle, president of Organic Farmers' Agency for Relationship Marketing, Inc. (OFARM), said that "U.S. organic farmers have desperately needed stronger NOP enforcement on fraud."
"It is encouraging to see that a number of elements that organic grain producer members of OFARM wanted to see included have become a part of the final rule," the Kansas farmer added. "The SOE rule will help tighten the national organic system to ensure organic integrity and better protect American organic farmers and confidence in the organic seal."
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The Solution Is the Soil: How Organic Farming Can Feed the World and Save the Planet
One man, backed by many, marches on Washington to tell lawmakers and the world that 'there is hope right beneath our feet.'
Oct 09, 2014
Just over a week ago, the executive director of the Rodale Institute, Mark 'Coach' Smallwood, set out from the group's research farm in eastern Pennsylvania on a 160-mile journey to Washington, DC with a walking stick, a brimmed hat, and a simple but profound message: We can not only stop climate change. We can reverse it.
"I think climate change is Mother Nature's gift to us... And I believe it's not too late and that she is providing opportunities for us to change." -- Mark 'Coach' Smallwood, The Rodale InstituteWhen Smallwood makes his expected arrival in the nation's capital on October 16, he will deliver a Rodale white paper--titled Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change: A Down-to-Earth Solution to Global Warming (pdf)--to lawmakers alongside a broader message from a global coalition of organic farmers, scientists, and food justice advocates who argue that a global transformation in how the world grows its crops, manages its soil, and feeds its livestock is the key solution available to us that can best stop, even reverse, the growing and dangerous volumes of carbon and other greenhouse gases now pushing world's atmosphere and oceans beyond capacity.
"We must bring awareness to this research and encourage the USDA and Congress to create legislation that supports organic farmers," said Smallwood on Wednesday night as he marked the halfway point of his trek. "Only organic farming can stop the chaos that we have created--chaos that is deeply impacting our environment on so many levels."
The crucial role that regenerative organic agriculture (or ROA) can play, as well as the notion of "soil as the solution," is explained in the white paper itself:
Solving the long-term climate equation means getting to a zero carbon economy devoid of fossil fuels. It is widely acknowledged that we are not going to arrive at a new low-carbon economy any time soon; the technologies, markets, political and social structures needed to shift the world's economies are not materializing quickly enough. In the decades it will take to decarbonize the economy, an unacceptable level of warming will become locked in. With each passing year of inaction, hope for our planet's future becomes harder and harder to rally. We are on a trajectory of too little too late.
If we wait, our only hope for the future lies in yet-to-be-discovered technological fixes coupled with the loss of whole cultures and species. The numbers are so sobering that untested technologies for carbon capture and storage have in short order gone from unsafe, outlandish whims to pressing societal needs: bioengineering the human body has even entered the climate conversation. And yet, there is hope right beneath our feet. There is a technology for massive planetary geoengineering that is tried and tested and available for widespread dissemination right now. It costs little and is adaptable to local contexts the world over. It can be rolled out tomorrow providing multiple benefits beyond climate stabilization. The solution is farming. Not just business-as-usual industrial farming, but farming like the Earth matters. Farming like water and soil and land matter. Farming like clean air matters. Farming like human health, animal health and ecosystem health matters. Farming in a way that restores and even improves on soil's natural ability to hold carbon.
The concept that is most critical to understand about Rodale's research, explained Smallwood recently, "Is that we're not talking about slowing things down. We're talking about the capability of regenerative organic agriculture being able to actually reverse and draw down the excesses" of carbon and other greenhouse gases that are now overwhelming the capacity of the planet's atmosphere.
"We don't have to wait for technological wizardry," reads the report, "regenerative organic agriculture can substantially mitigate climate change, now."
The theories contained in the institute's white paper are backed by decades of study and "lots of deep science," said Smallwood, but his goal is to keep the ideas simple and accessible for both policy-makers and regular people. He says he has "taken a completely different look at what climate change is," as opposed to the tendency among some advocates of climate action to focus on droughts, extreme weather, and apocalyptic warnings.
"I think climate change is Mother Nature's gift to us," he said optimistically. "I believe that it's nature knocking us on the head with each of those kinds of events. And I believe it's not too late and that she is providing opportunities for us to change what is happening currently."
As part of the effort to promote and generate for support for Smallwood's journey--during which he'll meet with local farmers, food system experts, and people curious about his message--Rodale released this short video:
Walk for an Organic PlanetDid you know that organic farming can reverse climate change? Its true. And Rodale Institute has the data to prove it. On October ...
Last month, at an event in New York City that took place in the wake of the People's Climate March that brought more than 400,000 people into the streets demanding climate action, some of the world's leading voices gathered to endorse Rodale's most recent research and Smallwood's symbolic journey. In a conference room just blocks from the United Nation's headquarters where leaders were gathering to discuss what should be done to address the climate crisis, the panel of experts shared their informed perspectives on why transforming how we manage the soil beneath our feet is the key solution towards tackling the most worrisome--and interconnected--challenges now facing humanity: resource scarcity and environmental degradation, economic inequality, rampant poverty and food insecurity, and the overarching threat posed by human-caused climate change.
"Mother Nature set up the entire system so that photosynthesis would--using the largest solar-powered engine ever created on the planet--remove carbon from the atmosphere and put it back to work for the benefit of all life." --Tom Newmark, Carbon UndergroundAndre Leu, director of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), acknowledged that there is not a single solution that can by itself halt or reverse climate change, but that the work put forth by Rodale is "one of the most significant solutions" that needs to be given to the world and fought for by anyone serious about the crisis.
And for Leu, what Rodale's work--which he called "some of the most important research being done on this planet"--has shown with over thirty years of side-by-side trials, is that organic farming out-performs conventional farming and can, indeed, feed the world. "We know it can," said Leu.
What is also so hopeful about the idea of regenerative organic agriculture, argue its supporters, is that it takes one of the primary systems driving climate change--modern industrial agriculture--and supplants it with a solution that also addresses numerous other crises now facing modern society.
"Soil, not oil," said Tom Newmark, co-founder of the Carbon Underground, an advocacy group that has endorsed Rodale's research and is collaborating with the institute on bringing the message of ROA to the broader public. "The soil is available and it wants its carbon back," Newmark explained. "Mother Nature set up the entire system so that photosynthesis would--using the largest solar-powered engine ever created on the planet--remove carbon from the atmosphere and put it back to work for the benefit of all life."
The Indian scientist and food sovereignty activist Vandana Shiva, who actually wrote the book titled 'Soil Not Oil,' was also in attendance.
Shiva championed Rodale's latest research data, but said it was important to note that what the institute's scientists are presenting "in principle" has been well-known by organic farmers, including indigenous people and ecologists, going back generations. The fact, she said, is that the world's industrial agriculture system--exemplified by large monocultures and factory farms--is maintained by powerful interests who "refuse to recognize" the benefits that RAO (sometimes referred to as agroecology) can deliver. "I think that is a specific and large challenge we face," Shiva said, "because it is a deliberate denial."
"We should be subsidizing small-holder farmers, as they are not only the lungs, but they are the food-providers of the world." --Alnoor Ladha, The RulesAnti-poverty activist Alnoor Ladha, co-founder of the The Rules project, articulated the tensions between corporate-controlled, large-scale agriculture and small-scale, regenerative farming practitioners by saying: "We have industrial agriculture that uses 75 percent of the world's resources and only yields 25 percent of the world's food, versus organic farming which provides 75 percent of the world's food while using only 25 percent of the world's resources. Why is there even a debate going on here? I think we have to understand the power that's at stake here and why we're not having these conversations about soil."
Instead of subsidizing industrial agriculture with hundreds of billions of dollars in annual subsidies, argued Ladha, "We should be subsidizing small-holder farmers, as they are not only the lungs, but they are the food-providers of the world."
The additional challenge, in terms of promoting the solution, said Shiva, is showing how ecological farming practices address that series of intertwined crises that now pivot on the climate crisis and are created by our reliance on fossil fuels, industrial-scale farming, and neoliberal globalization.
"Monocultures of the mind have given us this either/or framework," she explained, "'You either have more food or you can have the environment.' 'You can either have anti-poverty or you can have the environment.' And those kind of arguments are a big part of the mindset that's created this problem."
"We say 'No' to more false solutions to hunger, the climate, and other environmental crises that we're facing and 'Yes' to the real solutions of agrarian reform, agroecology, and food sovereignty." --Dena Hoff, La Via Campesina
Instead of 'either/or,' Shiva concludes, agroecology provides benefits that come one after another. "It is 'and' and 'and' and 'and' and 'and' and 'and," she explained, referring to the multitude of socio-economic, nutritional, ecological, and climate benefits that flow into and out of organic farming systems.
Larry Kopald, Newmark's colleague at the Carbon Underground, expanded on Shiva's argument by saying that agroecology could be seen as one of those 'And, you also get....' infomercial sales pitches.
With ROA, Kopald explained, "We can reverse climate change. We can have more secure food. We can reduce our water use. We can eat better. And, quite frankly, rather than spend the projected $5 trillion in adaptation that [some experts] are talking about, we can save $5 trillion in healthcare, because we're gonna be healthier people. We're going to create more jobs, and because the input costs are less, we're going to be able to pay for them."
Organic farming and regenerative practices are profound, says Shiva, not only because soil sequestration could create "a 100 percent solution" in terms of carbon, but because it simultaneously addresses "the health problem, the unemployment problem, the poverty problem, and the water problem" all at once.
According to Newmark, "The solution is available now and there are no technological impediments."
"This is the great promise of the regenerative organic agricultural movement," he concluded: "It is the only known technology whereby we can take the excess hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere now and--using Mother Nature's genius--gently restore that carbon back to where it is the greatest tonic for all life on the planet, permitting all of us to look at our children and our grandchildren."
Dena Hoff, the North America coordinator for La Via Campesina said the message from her group, which represents small-holder and peasant farmers from across the world, is simple: "We say 'No' to more false solutions to hunger, the climate, and other environmental crises that we're facing and 'Yes' to the real solutions of agrarian reform, agroecology, and food sovereignty."
"Join us," she said, "As we globalize the struggle and globalize the hope."
And as the Rodale Institute's white paper that Smallwood carries with him concludes:
We are at a critical moment in the history of our species. Climate change is a monumental opportunity to change course and move into a future that embraces life, a future bent on encouraging health, a future where clean air and clean water is available to all. In so many ways, a fundamental restructuring of how we cultivate our food is at the heart of this shift. Widespread regenerative organic agriculture will be built on supports that necessarily also support rural livelihoods, strengthen communities and restore health the world over. Regenerative organic agriculture is our best hope for creating a future we all want to live in, and a future our children will be happy to inherit.
Seems like a message worth delivering.
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