If governments won’t solve
the climate, hunger, health, and democracy crises, then the
people will… Regenerative agriculture provides answers to
the soil crisis, the food crisis, the health crisis, the
climate crisis and the crisis of democracy. -
Dr. Vandana Shiva, speaking at the founding meeting of
Regeneration International,
La Fortuna de San Carlos, Costa Rica, June 8, 2015
Degenerate—(verb) to
decline from a noble to a lower state of development; to
become worse physically and morally; (noun) a person of low
moral standards; having become less than one’s kind…”.
- New Webster’s Dictionary, 1997 Edition
Welcome to Degeneration Nation.
After decades of self-destructive
business-as-usual—empire-building, waging wars for fossil
fuels, selling out government to the highest bidder, lacing
the environment and the global food supply with GMOs,
pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, toxic sweeteners,
artery-clogging fats, and synthetic chemicals, attacking
the organic and natural health movement, brainwashing the
body politic, destroying soils, forests, wetlands, and
biodiversity, and discharging greenhouse gas pollution into
the atmosphere and the oceans like there’s no tomorrow—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, compounded by
deteriorating public health and the dictatorial rise of
political elites and multinational corporations such as
Monsanto.
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.
Under siege, Big Food fights back
On the food, natural health and anti-GMO fronts, our
battles for a new regenerative (non-GMO, non-chemical,
non-factory farm, non-fossil fuel) food, farming and land
use system are educating and energizing millions of people.
The profits of the big junk food, chemical, and GMO
corporations are
falling, while demand for organic and climate-friendly
grass fed foods continues to skyrocket.
In the last quarter Monsanto’s profits fell by
34 percent, while the company’s highly publicized
attempt to buy out agri-toxics giant Syngenta fell flat, in
no small part due to the “worst corporation in the world”
reputation that the global Millions Against Monsanto
Movement has managed to hang around Monsanto’s neck.
In the U.S., the growing power of the anti-GMO movement
has forced the passage of a game-changing mandatory GMO
labeling law in Vermont. The Vermont law will go into effect
July 1, 2016, forcing national brands to either remove GMOs
from their products or label them. The Vermont law will also
make it illegal to label GMO-tainted foods as “natural.”
Many national brands have already begun removing bogus
“natural” or “all natural” claims from their packaging.
Consumer pressure on Whole Foods Market (WFM) has
likewise forced the organic and natural products giant to
declare that all 40,000 foods, including meat and take-out,
in WFM stores will have to be labeled as GMO or GMO-free by
2018. Other chains, such as the rapidly growing Natural
Grocer, have already gone GMO-free.
While a number of major food brands and chains, such as
Hershey’s and Chipotle’s, have already begun removing GMOs
from their products, the impending Vermont law has created
panic among the Biotech Bullies, with Monsanto and the
Grocery Manufacturers Association attempting to ram through
the passage of the draconian, highly unpopular DARK (Deny
Americans the Right to Know) Act (H.R.
1599) in Congress, even though 90 percent of Americans
want GMO foods labeled.
The DARK Act will nullify the Vermont GMO labeling law
and take away the long-established constitutional right of
states to label foods and regulate food safety. But such a
blatant attack on states’ and consumer rights will also
likely create a major backlash. Even the mass media has
warned that the forced passage of the DARK Act, either
through Congressional vote, or more likely, a back-room-deal
rider inserted into a Federal Appropriations bill, will
likely enrage health- and environmentally conscious
consumers. As Fortune magazine
reports, Big Food may indeed be able to ram through the
unpopular Dark Act, but this outrageous maneuver will likely
lead to “a classic case of winning the battle and losing the
war.”
The global grassroots swarm: next steps
Now that we’ve stung Monsanto and Food Inc. (corporate
agribusiness) with thousands of campaigns, boycotts,
protests, litigation and legislative efforts, what are our
next steps in the great 2015 Food Fight?
-
Defeat the DARK Act in the U.S.
Every major anti-GMO and alternative food and farming
network in the U.S. is now mobilizing against the DARK
Act, which has already passed the U.S. House of
Representatives 275-150. We must mobilize, as never
before, to stop this outrageous bill in the Senate. But
we must also be prepared for dirty tricks, a secret
rider inserted into one or more Congressional
Appropriations Bills that will not require an open
debate or vote in the Senate. And if, despite all our
efforts, the DARK Act becomes law, we must be prepared
to carry out our own skull-and-crossbones labeling by
aggressively testing all of the major (non-organic) U.S.
food brands, including meat and animal products, and by
exposing the GMOs, pesticide residues, antibiotics,
hormones and growth promoters that make these degenerate
foods unfit for human consumption. Following our
exposure of Food Inc.’s dirty little secrets, we must
then launch an ongoing boycott to drive these foods off
the market.
-
Expand and deepen our message. We
need to change our campaign message from “Boycott and
Ban GMOs” to “Boycott and Ban GMOs, as well as the toxic
chemicals, animal drugs and factory farms that are an
integral part of the industrial/GMO food and farming
system.” GMOs in processed foods are a major threat to
our health and the environment, but they are only part
of the problem of our degenerate food system. Polls
consistently show that U.S. consumers are equally
alarmed by the toxic pesticides, antibiotics and
synthetic hormones in non-organic foods. We need to
emphasize that GMOs are pesticide delivery systems, and
that GMOs are not only found in most processed foods and
beverages, but they are also found in nearly all
non-organic, non-grass fed meat and animal products.
Every bite of factory-farmed meat, dairy or eggs, every
sip of factory-farmed milk, not only contains GMOs, but
also the toxic pesticides, antibiotics and animal drugs
that are slowly but surely destroying public health. We
also need to point out that every time you pull up to
the gas pump, you are filling up your tank with not only
greenhouse gas-emitting gasoline, but Monsanto’s
chemical-intensive, soil destroying GMO corn ethanol as
well.
-
Frame the overall fight as degenerative food,
farming and land use, versus regenerative agriculture
and land use. Even before GMOs hit the market
in 1994, in the form of Monsanto’s
Bovine Growth Hormone, America’s industrial food and
farming system was terrible for human health, the for
the environment, farm animals and rural communities. If
we somehow managed to get rid of all GMOs tomorrow, our
(non-organic) food system would still be degenerating
our health, biodiversity, water quality, and most
importantly, our climate. The industrial food and
farming system, with its destructive deforestation and
land use, is the number one cause of global warming and
climate disruption. But at the same time as we expose
the hazards of industrial food and farming we must
spread the good news that regenerative agriculture is
not only better for our health, but that it can fix the
climate crisis as well, by
sequestering in the soil several hundred billion
tons of excess atmospheric carbon over the next two
decades. We need to Cook Organic, not the Planet. This
requires a new message, and a broader coalition beyond
simply “GMO-free.”
-
Get ready to go to war. Given how
desperate Monsanto and Big Ag have become, we must
prepare for any eventuality. The reason Big Food and Big
Biotech are escalating the war against consumer choice
and food safety is because a critical mass of the public
no longer believes the lies. Monsanto and Big Food
understand full well that they are losing the battle for
the hearts and minds and consumer dollars of the
majority, not only in the U.S. but globally. That’s why
they are pushing the DARK Act and negotiating secret
international trade deals, such as the Trans-Pacific
Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership, deals that would take away consumer rights
to label and ban GMOs, pesticides, antibiotics and other
dangerous animal drugs. This is no longer simply a food
fight, but a war. We need to step up our public
education, grassroots mobilization and most importantly,
our marketplace pressure and boycotts.
-
Link together the food, farm, forest, climate
and economic justice movements. The climate
crisis, even though many people don’t understand this
yet, is the most important issue that humans have ever
faced. The food and farm movement needs to move beyond
single-issue campaigning to challenge the entire system
of industrial agriculture, junk food, ethanol production
and factory farming. We need to educate people to
understand that industrial food and farming, GMOs,
destructive deforestation and land use, and mindless
consumerism are the major causes of global warming and
climate destabilization. There will be no GMO-free, or
organic food on a burnt planet. At the same time the
climate movement must move beyond its
50-percent solution (reducing and eliminating fossil
fuel emissions), to the 100-percent solution of zero
emissions plus maximum carbon sequestration in the soils
and forests through regenerative organic agriculture,
planned rotational grazing reforestation, and land use.
The hour is late, but we, the global grassroots, still
have time to mobilize and act, to regenerate the system
before it further degenerates us.
Ronnie Cummins is international director of the
Organic Consumers Association and its Mexico affiliate,
Via
Organica.