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While the global elite (Bill Gates, Silicon Valley, the World Economic Forum, et al.) and the new corporate-indentured Biden Administration are calling for a permanent pandemic-induced “Great Reset” that unfortunately seems to take the technocratic surveillance state and economic ruthlessness of the Chinese Communist Party as its example, we at OCA have something else in mind. We don’t need to emulate the lockdown-on-demand and digital dictatorship in China in order to get ahead.
What we need instead is participatory democracy, constitutional freedom, human rights, and Regeneration. We need a grassroots-powered, equitable Organic and Regenerative revolution that can solve our public health, food, farming and climate crisis.
In case you haven’t read my book, Grassroots Rising (Chelsea Green Publishers 2020), here is Chapter Nine, which is called “Roadmap to Regeneration in the United States 2020-2030.”
READ: Roadmap to Regeneration in the United States, 2020—2030
Learn more about Chelsea Green’s Books—The Politics and Practice of Sustainability
www.chelseagreen.com
Facebook: chelseagreenpub
Twitter: @chelseagreen
Instagram: @chelseagreenbooks
Following up on “Back to the Future with Tom ‘Mr. Monsanto’ Vilsack,” this is the second installment in a series of articles we’re doing on President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
If you haven’t already, please tell your U.S. Senators to vote NO on Vilsack.
In our last post, we listed the dozens of new genetically modified crops Vilsack pushed through the U.S.D.A. and cloned animals that he allowed to enter the market without review.
Today, we focus on Vilsack’s 2015 approval of dicamba-resistant cotton and soy. He knew these GMOs would unleash a raft of hellish herbicide drift incidents plaguing organic and conventional farmers alike. But, it was Monsanto's biggest product launch ever, supposedly a fix for the weed problems with Roundup Ready crops (resistant to glyphosate), so he turned a blind eye to the danger.
Dicamba is diabolical. Since the dawn of industrial agriculture, there has never been such an intense and prolonged period of crop losses due to pesticide damage, as that wrought by Vilsack's 2015 rubber stamping of Monsanto's dicamba-resistant GMOs.
READ: Vilsack's Dicamba Disaster: Reason #2 Senators Should Vote NO on Biden's USDA Pick
Global media and news channels like Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN and India’s NDTV have been marketing “Warp Speed” vaccines— although their efficacy including how long their immunity lasts is not clear—to the world with images of Prime Ministers, Vice President elects, and a Crown Prince in the Middle East taking the jab live on television– seemingly to encourage vaccine skeptics. Vaccine nationalism is growing with intense competition among Pharmaceutical Corporations and countries that manufacture vaccines and their local partners.
However, the country-specific quantitative and qualitative data now available for many hot and humid tropical South East Asian and African countries for the year 2020, indicate that there is NO Covid-19 emergency in a vast majority of countries in the Global South, and hence little need to rush to buy vaccines.
READ: If Covid-19 is Primarily a ‘First World’ Virus, Why is the Global South in Lockdown?
In the last issue of Organic Bytes, we published an important article called “Does the Regeneration Movement Have a Race Problem?,” which raised long-overdue, important issues for the North American Organic and Regenerative Movement.
Today we’d like to call attention to the often overlooked fact that the three billion farmers and villagers of the Global South (especially Latin America, Africa, and Asia) are likely our best hope, not only for feeding most of the world, but for regenerating billions of acres of farmland, pasture, rangeland, and forests, sequestering billions of tons of excess carbon, both in soils and above ground, and reversing climate change.
In the last several issues of Bytes we have called attention to the incredible potential of native desert plants (Agave and Mesquite) in a revolutionary Mexican agroforestry system to sequester carbon, produce large amounts of fermented animal forage, and eliminate rural poverty. But throughout the Global South, not just in Mexico and other arid and semi-arid lands, there are agroforestry, reforestation, holistic livestock management, and ecosystem restoration practices with tremendous potential for reversing climate change, restoring biodiversity, and eliminating rural poverty.
For more on organic and regenerative practices in the Global South subscribe to our Regeneration International newsletter.
For more on the Global South’s potential for Regeneration, see Eric Toensmeier’s book The Carbon Farming Solution, published by Chelsea Green.
Here’s a chart by Toensmeier, showing how climate and soil conditions, accelerated photosynthesis, biodiversity, and traditional and indigenous practices in the Global South give these regions an important advantage over the Northern Hemisphere in terms of carbon sequestration and regeneration capacity.
This year, our partners at MOSES (Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service) are taking their well-known annual conference in a creative new direction.
They’re joining forces with four other organizations to put on a virtual conference called Growing Stronger: Collaborative Conference on Organic and Sustainable Farming. This 5-in-1 online conference will take place on February 22-27, 2021.
The organizations co-hosting the conference along with MOSES are GrassWorks Grazing Conference, OGRAIN Organic Grain Conference, Midwest Organic Pork Conference, and Organic Vegetable Production Conference.
If you’d like to join the community of farmers, gardeners, regenerative leaders, consumers, and change-makers attending this conference, you can learn more and register here. The conference is sure to provide a wealth of insights, connections, and knowledge for you—no matter where you’re at in your journey of learning about organic agriculture.
Don’t miss the roundtable discussion by Ronnie Cummins, OCA’s International Director, about agave agroforestry systems and their potential for large-scale landscape regeneration. He’ll be joined by André Leu, International Director of Regeneration International.
On January 21, 2021 at 1:00 pm CST, conference organizer Tom Manley will have a livestream discussion with OCA Political Director Alexis Baden-Mayer about what the 2021 conference has to offer and how you can participate.
We hope to see you online!
WATCH the livestream or recording here
REGISTER here
WATCH the past 2020 conference keynote by Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm, author of "Farming While Black"
Will we ever get back to normal?
With COVID-19 continuing to dominate our lives and unprecedented turmoil in Washington DC, it’s hard to imagine there was ever a time when we felt “normal.”
The pandemic and often misguided government response has challenged every aspect of modern society. It has also exposed strategic vulnerabilities in our society, especially in our food and health system.
The old normal may feel familiar and comfortable but it’s not working. It’s built on a foundation of corporate control, toxic agribusinesses, corrupt power hierarchies, “food” that barely qualifies as food, poisoned environments and the loss of biodiversity.
Political powers and economic powers have already begun to co-opt the "we need to change" message to further their own ends.
They seek to redefine "nature," “agriculture" and “health” to suit a corporate/technocratic vision that promotes greater industrialization, artificial intelligence and Big Data and puts technologies like genetic engineering at the heart of a “Great Reset” that it pretends will be equitable and sustainable.
Haven’t we all had enough of that?
For OCA, this tragic and polarized era has brought clarity and a renewed sense of purpose. We are redoubling our efforts to build a new and better normal for everyone.
Your donations, to either Organic Consumers Association or Citizens Regeneration Lobby, will help us succeed.
Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
Support Citizens Regeneration Lobby, OCA’s 501(c)(4) lobbying arm (not tax-deductible)
Donate $100 or more and we’ll send you a copy of Ronnie’s new book
Click here for more ways to support our work
Bill Gates, enthusiastic supporter of a Great Reset and the fourth richest person in the world, known for his computer programming skills rather than his love of the outdoors, has been quietly snatching up 242,000 acres of farmland across the U.S. — enough to make him the top private farmland owner in America.
READ: America's Biggest Owner Of Farmland Is Now Bill Gates
Mexico Mulls Use of GMO Corn in Feed
Democrats Claim Censorship Necessary To Stop ‘Fascism’, But They Still Serve Militarism and Corporatism
The Wuhan Lab Leak Hypothesis Goes Mainstream
Are Some Animal Welfare Labels ‘Humanewashing’?
Astonishing COVID-19 Testing Fraud Revealed
The Radical Case for Growing Huge Swaths of Bamboo in North America
Pandemic Sparks Call for End to Big Ag’s Control of Seeds and Food System
