Q&A with Regi Haslett-Marroquin on The True Cost of Food: The Bill Is Already in the Mail

By Christine Grillo, John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future

Working with the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance in Minnesota, Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin is the architect and engineer behind the regenerative poultry system, one of many farm operations at the 100-acre farm in Northfield, through the Main Street Project. His approach to regenerative agriculture involves a biodiverse system of symbiotically connected livestock and perennials, with no chemical inputs, building soil, cleaning water and delivering economic benefits to the community.

What U.S. Farming Can Do to Stop Climate Change

By Ronnie Cummins, YES! magazine

However, for the Green New Deal to accomplish its climate goals, it must spur two large-scale transitions: the transition away from fossil fuel use toward renewable energy, and the transition away from industrial agriculture, a huge polluter and greenhouse gas emitter in its own right, toward organic regenerative practices that draw down and sequester carbon.

Blazing New Trails beyond the Bushfires

By Eva Perroni, Sustainable Food Trust

It is the collective experiences, voices and defined action of people from impacted communities that will help shape the vision for long-lasting, impactful, transformative change. For frontline farming communities, the solution starts with building thriving local economies which provide farmers with dignified livelihoods that are ecologically diverse, healthy and resilient.

Grassroots Rising (Excerpt)

By Ronnie Cummins, Resilience.org

The primarily low-tech, shovel-ready, affordable solutions that we need already exist in every nation and region. We don’t need to invent new techniques. We simply need to identify, publicize, replicate, and scale up currently existing best practices utilizing farmer-to-farmer education and training, with major support and funding from the public and private sectors.

‘Clean Meat’ is Neither – We Can and Must Do Better

By Nicolette Hahn Niman, Sustainable Food Trust

Clearly, mainstream meat production needs much improvement. But this is precisely why faux meats are such a distraction. They get people like Bill Gates and other techies all excited. This siphons the energy, media attention and money away from the work that really needs to be done to fix agriculture. We need all hands on deck to transform mainstream agriculture from extractive to regenerative.

Down Under

By Courtney White, Resilience.org

As Australians grapple with the consequences of the fires in upcoming months and embark on the necessary journey of regenerating themselves and their land, I hope they will look to nature – and farmers like Colin, Eric and others – for inspiration.

What’s in a Name?

By Courtney White, Resilience.org

Words matter. Here’s what various dictionaries say about the word regenerate: to be formed or created again; to be renewed to a better, higher, or more worthy state; to be spiritually reborn; to generate or produce anew, especially after an injury; to restore to original strength or properties; to revive, reform, rekindle, rejuvenate, reconstruct, redeem, reawaken, or reanimate.

Soil Health Hits the Big Time!

By Courtney White, Resilience.org

Best of all, regenerative agriculture was acknowledged as a shovel-ready solution to climate change. That’s a big reason why over one hundred nations, NGOs, and agricultural organizations signed onto the original ‘4 For 1000 Initiative’. “[It] has become a global initiative,” said French Agriculture Minister Stéphane Le Foll. “We need to mobilize even more stakeholders in a transition to achieve both food security and climate mitigation thanks to agriculture.”

West’s ‘Dust Bowl’ Future now ‘Locked In’, as World Risks Imminent Food Crisis

By Nafeez Ahmed, Insurge Intelligence

Research sponsored by global credit ratings agency Moody’s concludes that by the end of century, parts of the US and Europe are now bound to experience severe reductions in rainfall equivalent to the American ‘dust bowl’ of the 1930s, which devastated Midwest farming for a decade. These consequences are now ‘locked in’ as a consequence of carbon emissions which we have already accumulated into the atmosphere.

The Carbon Ranch

By Courtney White, Resilience.org

My crazy idea turned out to not be so crazy after all. In a few short years, the idea of sequestering atmospheric carbon in soils took off thanks to the hard work of many people and organizations. It’s become a movement, which I’ll discuss in the next issue – a hopeful thing indeed!

The Key to the Environmental Crisis Is Beneath Our Feet

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt

There is a much cheaper and faster way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere that doesn’t rely on these corporate giants to transition us to 100% renewables. Additionally, it can be done while at the same time reducing the chronic diseases that impose an even heavier cost on citizens and governments. Our most powerful partner is nature itself, which over hundreds of millions of years has evolved the most efficient carbon sequestration system on the planet.

The Way Climate Change Unites Us

By Lynn Freehill-Maye, YES! magazine

While they may not agree on what has gotten them here, growers like Rosmann and Peterson are thinking beyond politicized climate change arguments to figure out solutions. They’re trying to adapt to the differences they’re experiencing, and even trying to mitigate them. Along with fellow PFI members, they’re approaching agriculture more regeneratively: focusing on soil health, planting cover crops, reducing chemicals, and minimizing the runoff that contributes to the Gulf of Mexico’s fishless “dead zone.”