By Frances Moore Lappé / November 30, 2018 Lady Liberty getting arrested. "Being 'good'—kind and honest with those we touch directly—is admirable and desirable, but we need more," writes the author. "It's time to elevate another virtue: courage." (Democracy Spring - April 2016) This is the 8th of Frances' Thought Sparks Video Series as she opens her heart about what fortifies her in this scary time & shares her often-surprising takes on themes of hope, democracy, and courage. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My headline is provocative, so let me quickly explain, starting with a huge claim about what’s unique about our world in this moment. Then I ask, Our era has been dubbed the Anthropocene because for the first time we humans are making our mark on the entire planet. Isn’t it high time we nail down the most basic traits of this master species—traits that will determine how it might handle responsibility of such magnitude…a ? Let’s start with a common observation that humans are self-absorbed, too self-absorbed…and challenge it: Maybe we got that one wrong, very wrong. Humans are pack animals. Just like wolves and elephants, we’re social. Anthropologists make the case that we are the most social of primates. We are, above all, obsessed with staying inside the pack. We know our preservation depends on its preservation. So our crisis might be understood this way: Life on earth as we’ve known it is in grave danger because humanity’s hyper-pack—defined as those whose members have the greatest destructive power on our earthly habitat—is heading right over the proverbial cliff. That cliff is climate chaos. That cliff is murderous conflict generated by fear of non-existent scarcity. That cliff is life-destroying inequality so extreme that now eight homosapiens control wealth equal to half all 7.6 billion of our species. Yet, relatively few defy or even call out the anti-life rules and norms driving us over this cliff. In such a moment, what is the primary moral virtue needed? Being “good”—kind and honest with those we touch directly—is admirable and desirable, but we need more. It’s time to elevate another virtue: courage. We can be “good” within our pack, but can we break with the pack? Can we stand when we’re the only one standing? I recall a moment I didn’t. In 2004, I canvassed door to door in the suburbs of Philly for Democrat Lois Murphy , a distinguished attorney running for a seat in Congress against Republican Jim Gerlach . One evening the community gathered in the social hall of a synagogue to hear the candidates debate. Taking our seats, we all fell silent as Murphy asked Gerlach to apologize before they began. Robo-calls from his campaign had linked Murphy to the Taliban, and she believed he should accept responsibility. I then recalled earlier in the day canvassing at the door of a man with a threatening dog. He asked: “Are you with the Taliban lady?” As I stood speechless, I remembered that on top of Murphy’s strong legal background, she’d made her mark defending women’s rights. What twisted irony to be linked to the Taliban. Gerlach refused to apologize, and the debate proceeded. But burned in my memory is self-recrimination. Why didn’t I simply stand up and declare that I’d remain standing until an apology was forthcoming? Others would have quickly risen with me, I’m sure. But I didn’t even think of it. Later, I had approached Gerlach and told him his ads were scandalous. For that, I lightly patted myself on the back, but, honestly, I felt crushed by what I had done. My point is that in that moment an obvious action didn’t even occur to me because I am, like most of us, programmed to go along with the group, not to make a fuss, not to stand out. Much later, in another situation in which I was out of synch with the group, I recalled how I’d failed that night in Philly. The still-raw regret stoked my courage, and I did get my hand up to make the challenge. My point is simple. It’s now time to focus on courage. It makes all other virtues possible. “Courage is the most important of all the virtues,” the poet Maya Angelou has said , “because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently.” Whatever it takes, let’s fortify our backbones as part of a rising Democracy Movement . Making pledges not only to ourselves but to others can help. Acknowledging we’re social animals—that’s a given—let’s discover the thrill of risking hostility, humiliation, and failure to say and to do what we know is necessary to create democracy bringing out the best in us. In the process, we create new “packs” with willing to risk on behalf of life. Goodness without courage is no longer good enough. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Note: Don’t miss watching the companion video to this article - one of Frances Moore Lappé’s Thought Sparks Video Series in which she opens her heart about what fortifies her in this scary time. Each week for nine weeks or more, her Small Planet Institute will release an informal 2-to-5-minute video in which Frances shares her often-surprising, liberating takes on hope, democracy, and courage.

By Frances Moore Lappé / December 11, 2018 A crowd gathers in Leipzig, Germany to commemorate the 70,000 people who courageously joined together in 1989 to peacefully demand freedom and democracy, a catalyst for the fall of the Berlin Wall. (Image: LTM/PUNCTUM ) Originally published on Common Dreams, December 11, 2018 This is the 9th of Frances' Thought Sparks Video Series as she opens her heart about what fortifies her in this scary time & shares her often-surprising takes on themes of hope, democracy, and courage. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ No matter how many times we hear of one person’s act of conscience igniting sparks that light up the sky, too many of us hold tight to the notion that our own acts don’t mean much. Aren’t we the proverbial drops in the bucket, nice but never spectacular? Or, as it dawned on my daughter Anna and me while writing Hope’s Edge for many of us it’s even worse. We feel more like drops in the Sahara, evaporating before we even hit the sand. One reason for blindness to our own power could be that we can’t see the bucket that our “action drops” are filling up--that is, the big, system-changes our individual choices inch forward. I do know that every time in my life that I have been able to catch even a glimpse of such a bucket, my life has changed. Most recently it happened as I marched more than a hundred miles with Democracy Spring in 2016 to sit on the Capitol steps, demanding money out of politics. Knowing that I was part of the rising Democracy Movement, I could feel my “drops” splashing into a powerful bucket. But a metaphor of “filling up” from the top down still misses a lot, for in our world where “there are no parts, only participants” (the lovely phrase of my departed friend, physicist Hans Peter Duerr) our energies radiate horizontally. It happens because in our interconnected world, almost always is noticing. Even if it’s one person. On that note, I love a story author Rebecca Solnit tells about a rainy day in the early 1960s when a handful of members protested above-ground nuclear testing in front of the Kennedy White House. They reported feeling “foolish and futile,” she writes. Then, years later one of the protesters learned that Dr. Benjamin Spock had driven by that day and thought to himself, if these women “are so passionately committed, he should give the issue more consideration himself.” The world famous “baby doctor” then became one of the most ardent and effective national leaders opposing above-ground nuclear testing, and by 1963, President Kennedy had signed a test ban treaty. Sometimes sparks from individual acts ignite a positive firestorm. Some years ago, after speaking at a university in Leipzig, Germany, students led me on a quick tour of their beautiful city. Soon one young guide pointed to the church of St. Nicolai. “That’s where it began,” she told me. That church played a key role in bringing down the Berlin Wall. What? I had never heard that Leipzig, much less this church, had been part of the fall of the Wall, on November 9, 1989, leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union and changing the world forever. Oh, yes, she went on, this is where people began to gather--by early October, some 70,000. In other German cities, similar protests took off. Later, I read a real-time account by 14-year old Markus Laegel, telling of his and his parents’ experience in that moment: Thousands of people gather. They’re here to pray. They’re praying for peace. The prayer is set to start at 6 p.m. The idea is to use the Nicolai church, but that’s already full and it’s still only four o’clock. We go down to the church of St. Thomas. That’s full too, but we manage to find a space. Mum, Dad and me. We’re a family. Not just us, but everyone. Everyone in every church at that moment. Markus then quotes a minister’s words to describe what is unfolding: When you hold a candle you need both hands. You have to guard the flame… You can’t hold a stone or a club at the same time… The army patrols and police were drawn in, started conversations and retreated. And Markus continues: Thousands of people … lay their candles at the feet of the armed soldiers and police. The steps of the Stasi [state security] building—the organization that spied on, abused and sold people out—are now awash with candles. It looks like a river of peace and light. Exactly four weeks later, the Berlin Wall fell. Soon thereafter a leader in the collapsed East German regime, Horst Sindermann, acknowledged : “We had planned everything. We were prepared for any eventuality. Any except for candles and prayers.” I share Markus’s story because we each need to believe that the potential for courage—civil courage—is in each of us; and that our individual sparks may ignite conflagrations. Without acting, we will never know, and even if we act, we probably never know how we’ve changed history. One thing, however, is certain. Civil courage is the capacity to do what serves the common good, even if one must stand alone: for, while ultimately tens of thousands did join in these extraordinary actions, they depended on the courage of the first few willing to step up, to be different. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Note: Don’t miss watching the companion video to this article - one of Frances Moore Lappé’s Thought Sparks Video Series in which she opens her heart about what fortifies her in this scary time. Each week for nine weeks or more, her Small Planet Institute will release an informal 2-to-5-minute video in which Frances shares her often-surprising, liberating takes on hope, democracy, and courage.

By Frances Moore Lappé / September 10, 2018 (Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images) Originally published on Common Dreams, September 10, 2018 Frances Moore Lappé is launching Thought Sparks Video Series ! Each week, for nine weeks or more, her Small Planet Institute will release an informal 2-to-5-minute video in which Frances shares her often-surprising takes on themes of hope, democracy, and courage. She opens her heart about what fortifies her in this scary time. The first is: Possibility Creates Hope . And below is her companion blog. Enjoy! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I’ve been called a hope fiend, and I cop to it. More than ever, hope isn’t just a “nice” feeling we’re lucky to experience from time to time. No, hope has become a requirement, as despair is our worst enemy. So, let me share a few things this fiend has learned about hope. First, it’s work. Yes, I know that hope and effort don’t seem to go together. But think about it: A lot of good things in life--from a good meal to a good marriage--entail work, sometimes a lot of work. Yet, when we pause to savor them, we know it’s been worth it. So, what the work of hope? To be clear, I don’t mean the effort of pushing out the bad news. Hope is not blind faith. Neither is it the cheery note struck by Harvard professor Steve Pinker, who in Enlightenment Now , for example, encourages us not to worry because things are really getting better. I’m not convinced. But here’s the good news. I discovered that hope starts with one realization: Given that the nature of life is continuous change in which we’re all connected--so that every action affects the whole, moment to moment--it is simply not possible to know what’s possible. It is in this very knowing that hope lives. Precisely because I cannot be certain, I am free. I am free to go for the world I really want. Thus, I don’t have to be an optimist, and surely I’m not a pessimist. Rather, . I have no need for certainty of success, or even strong probability. Hope is a stance, not an assessment. As long as I can see even the possibility that my actions now can make a difference in tackling our root crisis--the assault on our democracy along with citizens’ weakening confidence in democracy—I’m going for it. I can continue eagerly throwing my energies into the rising movement for real democracy in America. To stay in a sense of possibility, however, I do have a “secret tool” I’ll share. I keep a mental list of big, positive leaps that I would have given zero chance of ever happening…until they did. Here’s one. In the early 1950s our nation was gripped by McCarthyism. Now, that was a real “witch hunt,” and the lives of several of my parents’ friends were wrecked. (Merely belonging to the Unitarian church my folks had helped to found in Texas made them suspect.) It was a dark era, but with the passage of time and acts of courage our culture learned. Just over one decade later, I became a warrior in the federal War on Poverty. I was paid by the government to go door-to-door in Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods to help people who’d been abused by slumlords and callous welfare officers to understand their rights and to find strength in solidarity. Thus, in only slightly more than one decade, our country went from fear and finger-pointing to a shared determination to confront the devastation of poverty. Ronald Reagan later quipped that in this war on poverty, poverty won. He was wrong. Americans cut the rate of poverty by half in just over decade. Get the idea? Try coming up with your own list. The fall of the Berlin Wall? Barack Hussein Obama elected US president...twice? Marriage equality? Or, note that it was Republican Richard Nixon who established the EPA and signed the 1970 Clean Air Act, making it possible since then to cut levels of six major air pollutants by more than 70 percent , even though our economy has grown three-fold. I rest my case. Today, I declare myself a hard-core, died-in-the-wool possibilist. Sure, it takes work, but hope is the great reward. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Note: Don’t miss watching the companion video to this article - one of Frances Moore Lappé’s Thought Sparks Video Series in which she opens her heart about what fortifies her in this scary time. Each week for nine weeks or more, her Small Planet Institute will release an informal 2-to-5-minute video in which Frances shares her often-surprising, liberating takes on hope, democracy, and courage.

Soil policies should be driven by science—not agrochemical companies By Kendra Klein and Anna Lappé Originally Published in The Magazine of the Sierra Club on May 17, 2021 The last time soil health was perceived as a pressing public concern was at the peak of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Now, for the first time in nearly a century, it has once again piqued policymakers’ interest as awareness grows that the ground beneath our feet is a crucial carbon sink, making the soil a potentially powerful tool to fight the climate crisis. Speaking at an Earth Day summit last month, President Joe Biden said , the “soil of our Heartland [is] the next frontier in carbon innovation,” reflecting the momentum behind an idea known as “regenerative agriculture.” But just as the nation is waking up from its long slumber about the importance of soil, new research shows that the pesticides so commonly used in American agriculture are devastating the very organisms that ensure dirt becomes healthy soil and not just dust. As a set of chemical poisons, pesticides pose an undeniable hazard to the life of soil. This new study—from Friends of the Earth, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the University of Maryland—is the first comprehensive review of the impact of pesticides on soil organisms. Researchers (including one of us) analyzed nearly 400 studies focused on the effect of pesticides (a term that includes insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides) on 275 species or groups of soil invertebrates, from beetles and earthworms to mites and ground-nesting bees. In 71 percent of cases, pesticides either directly killed the organisms being tracked or significantly harmed them; for example, by impairing their growth and reproduction or decreasing their abundance and diversity. These findings parallel previous research that illustrates pesticides’ impact on vital soil microorganisms like bacteria and fungi. Other research reveals troubling trendlines: A recent study found that pesticides’ toxic impact on many invertebrates has nearly doubled in the past decade because of the increasing use of two specific classes of pesticides: neonicotinoids and pyrethroids. Some neonicotinoids are 1,000 times more toxic to bees than the infamous pesticide DDT, and they linger in the environment for months or years, creating a compounding toxicity in the environment. Another study found that since neonicotinoids were first introduced in the 1990s, US agriculture has become 48 times more toxic to insect life . Scientists warn that the loss of invertebrates threatens the collapse of ecosystems —and that biodiversity loss is a crisis on par with climate change . The findings of this new study should alarm us not only because they further underscore the starring role pesticides play in the decline of insect populations, but also because the life of soil is at the heart of its ability to capture and store carbon. What do we mean by the “life of soil”? Plants breathe in carbon from the air, then store it in their bodies and exude it through their roots. Hidden from our view, a teeming ecosystem of microorganisms transfers carbon from roots to soil. Invertebrates such as earthworms and springtails feed on fallen plants, breaking them down and excreting carbon-rich casts and feces, mixing organic matter into the soil as they go. The aliveness of soil also bolsters farmers’ resilience in the face of climate-change-driven weather extremes like droughts and floods. Invertebrates are ecosystem engineers: With their tunnels and burrows, they craft soil structures, enabling the flow of nutrients, air, and water below ground. This allows the land to readily absorb water during intense rains and retain it during times of drought, much like a massive sponge. With their tunnels and burrows, invertebrates craft soil structures, enabling the flow of nutrients, air, and water below ground. This allows the land to readily absorb water during intense rains and retain it during times of drought, much like a massive sponge. In short, healthy soil is living soil. So it should be no surprise that chemicals designed to kill are at odds with the objectives of regenerative agriculture. Research shows that the very farmers who are not using hazardous pesticides are among the most successful at capturing carbon. Organic farmers—who are expressly prohibited from using over 900 agricultural pesticides and who have long championed regenerative approaches like cover cropping, crop diversification, and composting—can sequester up to 25 percent more carbon in soi l and achieve deeper and more persistent carbon storage than farmers using chemical approaches. Yet some of the loudest voices in the national conversation on soil are the companies behind the world’s most toxic pesticides. Last month, pesticide giants including Bayer-Monsanto and Syngenta were among the prominent backers of the reintroduced Growing Climate Solutions Act (GCSA), a bill that would channel interest in regenerative agriculture into soil carbon markets. That means farmers would be paid to sequester carbon—and then those “carbon credits” would be sold to polluters, allowing them to keep polluting. There’s no doubt that farmers should be supported in shifting to regenerative methods. But the evidence shows that using carbon markets to do so is an oversimplified and dangerous approach that will “ let big polluters off the hook and fail the needs of family farmers , ” says the National Family Farm Coalition. Carbon markets have repeatedly failed in their primary goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They have been plagued by fraud , and in many cases they have worsened pollution in low-income communities and communities of color, even resulting in human-rights abuses across the globe. Moreover, measuring soil carbon in a uniform way to ensure integrity in soil carbon markets will likely remain an elusive goal because soil carbon fluctuates based on the seasons, and samples taken even from the same field can lead to very different results. Some of the loudest voices in the national conversation on soil are the companies behind the world’s most toxic pesticides. In light of this new study’s findings, another fundamental flaw of carbon markets is particularly concerning: They can be gamed by powerful players. Hence, the support from pesticide giants. Bayer, for instance, is pushing the passage of GCSA because the company stands to win big. If the bill passes, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) would facilitate farmers’ participation in private schemes like the new Bayer Carbon Initiative . Farmers would enroll in Bayer’s digital agriculture platform, Climate FieldView, and implement certain practices—dictated by Bayer—to receive compensation. Bayer would then sell credits for farm-sequestered carbon to polluters. But programs like Bayer’s are designed to accommodate the largest industrial-style farms and depend on use of the company’s patented seeds and toxic pesticides like glyphosate, a weed killer with known impacts on soil organisms like earthworms. Even more perverse, Bayer may pay farmers in the form of credits to be redeemed in the Bayer PLUS Rewards Platform —credits that are most efficiently spent on more Bayer products. While we celebrate that the conversation about soil and climate change is becoming mainstream, it’s imperative that the resulting policies are driven by science, not by the interests of agrochemical companies. The successful conservation programs that emerged from the Dust Bowl era can show us the way. Rather than spend billions of federal dollars creating market mechanisms that will enrich pesticide corporations and further entrench their power at the expense of family-scale farmers, the environment, and our health, we can invest in long-standing but under-resourced programs like the USDA’s Conservation Stewardship Program, Environmental Quality Incentives Program, and National Organic Program. And, we can update these programs to facilitate equitable participation of BIPOC farmers and to reflect the latest science on ecologically regenerative practices. During the Dust Bowl, the crisis was visible: Plumes of dust from the plains swept across the country and darkened the skies in Washington, DC. Today, the soil story is hidden in the ecosystems beneath our feet, but the crisis is just as pressing. This study is an urgent missive that the renewed national interest in healthy soil must result in policies that support truly regenerative efforts that build healthy, living farming systems.

What Biden’s burger boondoggle tells us about partisan politics and spin-doctoring By Anna Lappe (Photo by SIphotography /iStock) Originally Published in The Magazine of the Sierra Club, on May 7, 2021 For a couple of days in April, my Twitter s tream was abuzz with alarmist “the libs are coming for your burgers” headlines. The social media fire was sparked by news outlets and rogue posters asserting that President Biden’s Earth Day pronouncement for climate action—which set an ambitious goal of cutting US greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030—included a command to strip America of its burgers. Fox News host John Roberts rallied viewers with this battle cry: “Say goodbye to your burgers if you want to sign up to the Biden climate agenda.” Meanwhile, an on-air graphic declared, “Bye-Bye Burgers Under Biden’s Climate Plan.” In fact, Biden’s plan included nothing of the sort. The false claim seems to have stemmed from a British tabloid alleging that Biden would soon be scolding Americans to cut their red meat habit down to a measly four pounds a year. While the story was outlandishly off—Biden’s plan largely focused on massive decarbonization of the economy and didn’t mention beef at all—the tabloid had tapped into the findings of a real 2020 University of Michigan study. The punchline of that research was that, yes, dietary change in the United States could be a powerful tool to lower the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. Based on a large body of evidence of industrial animal agriculture’s climate footprint, particularly red meat, the researchers estimated that if Americans ate 90 percent less red meat and halved all other meat consumption, US greenhouse gas emissions would drop by 50 percent. In a retraction that aired several days after his burger fear-mongering, host Roberts even acknowledged as much. While the network was wrong about Biden’s meat-reduction demands, he said, the science was right: “Cutting back how much red meat people eat,” Roberts told Fox News viewers, “would have a drastic impact on harmful greenhouse gas emissions.” Despite the clear message embedded in this retraction—that eating less meat can reduce our climate impact—the damage had already been done: Those who heard the original spin were left believing there was truth behind Biden being pegged as a draconian hamburger-stealer-in-chief and were uninformed about the underlying takeaway: that by choosing to eat less meat, the typical American would benefit the climate, and their own health. What’s worse, the debate around reducing meat consumption became further positioned as something partisan , as opposed to, say, a matter of common sense. For years, advocates have been trying to sound the alarm that if we want to fix the climate crisis, we have to talk about food, and in particular, the environmental damage wrought by industrial-scale meat production. Although connected to nearly one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, food systems are not only a major climate crisis culprit; sustainable farming practices are a key part of climate resiliency and mitigation. So I was thrilled to see the University of Michigan study driving home the impact meat reduction could have—but much less than thrilled to see it misused as fodder for Fox News spin. Let’s be clear, this spin is not random; it’s a deliberate tactic: Politicize science so that common-sense decisions feel like partisan posturing. (And it’s not the first time it’s been spun around beef. Remember in early 2019 when Republicans seized on a comment made by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that “maybe we shouldn’t be eating a hamburger for breakfast, lunch, and dinner” to claim that her Green New Deal would outlaw hamburgers?) We’ve seen this spin strategy deployed to try to sideline individual climate action for years: Driving a Prius makes you a progressive. We’ve even seen it around the COVID-19 response: Donning a mask marks you as a Democrat. And now, we’re seeing it about the food and climate connection: Reaching for a lentil burger makes you a leftie. This spin is not random; it’s a deliberate tactic: Politicize science so that common-sense decisions feel like partisan posturing. And it’s not the first time it’s been spun around beef. Portraying these kinds of actions as partisan politics is a strategic means of sidelining their seriousness and silencing those who are uplifting the science behind them and pushing needed policy reforms. It’s also a way to keep the debate narrowly focused on individual action, not on a highly consolidated industry with undue influence on Capitol Hill that’s been working hard to thwart regulations. In one New York University study, researchers found that all 10 of the US-based meat and dairy companies they reviewed had contributed to efforts “to undermine climate-related policies.” But perhaps the ludicrousness of this spin is a sign of just how desperate the fossil fuel industry and its allies have become. That’s the take of my colleague Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media , who has been tracking the ways in which industry has used PR to fight climate action. Industry “knows climate action is popular,” Henn shared with me via email, “and that the public would be happy to ditch polluting fossil fuels in favor of clean, renewable energy.” He then added, with a semi-forgivable dad joke (his daughter is two months old), “when all you're left clinging to is a burger, you know your buns are on the line." The truth is simple. The amount of meat this country produces is out of whack—out of whack for our climate and for our health. The USDA estimates that we produce 222.4 pounds of red meat and poultry in 2018 for every man, woman, and child for domestic consumption alone—theoretically enough to have a burger for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The University of Michigan study notes that about one-third of that ends up on our plates as the meat and poultry we eat—a total of about 133 pounds a year, among the highest in the world. From all food sources, the typical American is eating about twice as much protein as our bodies can use . In other words, we can cut back, way back, on meat consumption without worrying about our protein needs; in fact, we’d see health benefits. Overconsumption of meat, after all, carries worrisome health consequences—researchers have found red meat consumption to be tied with increased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers, among other illnesses. Not to mention the fact that processed meat has been declared “carcinogenic to humans” by the world’s preeminent cancer authority—and that plant-based foods are an ample source of protein. The overarching message is that an industrial meat industry that is allowed to operate virtually unchecked impacted our health and the environment. And, whether we are a Fox News watcher or an NPR listener, we all can make choices—including, yes, cutting back on burgers—that align with our and the planet’s health. So let’s not take the bait from the burger boondoggle and instead be aware of why and when the spin-masters are trying to spin us.

By Anna Lappé In a new book, the author discusses the implications of her research, the future of glyphosate, and how Bayer plans to keep selling Roundup. Originally Published in Civil Eats on April 21, 2021 In August, 2018, a judge for the Superior Court of San Francisco, California read the verdict in a first-of-its-kind case : A suit against agrochemical giant Bayer over the link between non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the company’s glyphosate-based weedkillers, Roundup and RangerPro. On every count, the jury found Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) guilty. The court held that Bayer’s glyphosate-based weedkiller had caused the plaintiff’s cancer to develop, the company should have warned users of the health risks and failed to do so, and it had acted with “malice, oppression, and fraud” and should pay punitive damages. The total jury award: $289.2 million—reduced to $20.5 million on appeal. (Bayer will not appeal that $20.5 million Roundup verdict—the first Roundup verdict in the nation—to the U.S. Supreme Court, the company recently announced .) Veteran journalist and research director at public health advocacy group U.S. Right to Know Carey Gillam’s new book The Monsanto Papers offers an inside look at the legal fight that led to that historic verdict and an intimate portrait of the plaintiff at the heart of it, Lee Johnson. For the book, a follow-up to her first, Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science , Gillam pored over 80,000 pages of exhibits and documents and a 50,000-page trial transcript to reveal a chilling story of decades of doubt, denialism, and deflection that allowed glyphosate to become the most widely used herbicide in the world. It also profiles the legal advocates trying to hold the company accountable in the absence of government regulations doing so. I spoke with Gillam about the implications of her research, the future of glyphosate, and how Bayer plans to keep selling the controversial product. Tell us about the herbicide at the center of this story. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in these weed killers. Most people are familiar with Roundup as the brand name, a popular product to kill weeds in yards and gardens. Farmers use Roundup products to kill weeds in their fields and school districts and municipalities use it for a variety of reasons. It has become so ubiquitous that our government scientists have found glyphosate residues in rainfall. It’s commonly found as residues in the food we eat; it’s in the water we drink. So what the science tells us that it can do to our health and to our environment is a critically important issue. At the heart of your story is Lee Johnson, the first plaintiff to sue Bayer, which bought Monsanto and thus took on its glyphosate liability in 2018. What’s Lee’s connection to the weedkiller? Lee was a groundskeeper for a school district in Northern California. Part of his job was spraying these glyphosate-based weed killers around school grounds. He tried to wear protective gear as you’re supposed to do, but had been led to believe these products were safe. When he had an accident, and was doused in the weed killer, he didn’t worry about it too much because he had heard that these weedkillers were safe enough to drink. But soon after his accident, he developed a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. It manifests in the skin and ravages a person from head to toe. It caused Lee immense suffering and led to a terminal diagnosis. My story follows Lee from before his cancer through that journey and, ultimately, to when he decided a way to make his suffering meaningful was to try to hold Monsanto accountable and to take the company to trial. In the book, you dive into internal Monsanto documents to tell the story of the tactics that the company used to shape the story of glyphosate. Can you describe those tactics? The foundation to this story is that for 40 years the company has been deceiving consumers, regulators, lawmakers, farmers, and people like Lee who use glyphosate. Monsanto has been actively working to manipulate the scientific record about the safety of this chemical. That was made very clear through thousands of pages of documents, many that I had obtained before the litigation and that became the source material for my first book, Whitewash , and then the thousands of pages that came out during litigation. There are so many examples. In these documents, Monsanto discusses ghost writing scientific papers to promote the safety of glyphosate. They also talk about funding front groups, using third-party organizations to both promote the safety of this chemical and lobby lawmakers and regulators, and to attack people like myself, scientists, or anyone pointing to evidence that indicated health problems with this chemical. They spent literally millions of dollars on these subversive campaigns to discredit legitimate, independent science and to promote their ghost-written, manipulated science. They did this over decades and you see that very clearly laid out in the documents. The magnitude of this story was hard to wrap my mind around. Yes, there have been so many victims: Lee Johnson was the first person to take Monsanto to trial , but now, in the United States, there are over 100,000 people who have sued Monsanto, alleging their non-Hodgkin lymphoma is caused by their exposure to Roundup. Can you explain why the use of Roundup has increased and how it is tied to genetically engineered seeds? Yes, genetically engineered crops, or GMOs, are linked very closely to glyphosate. Monsanto brought to market the very first genetically engineered crops in the 1990s. They weren’t designed to be more nutritious or grow better with less water; they were designed to be glyphosate-tolerant, so they could be sprayed directly with the herbicide and not die. Why did the company focus on engineering this trait? We see from their internal records that Monsanto’s patent on glyphosate was expiring in 2000 and the company wanted to hold onto market share. They wanted to make sure generic glyphosate products didn’t take over the market. It was quite ingenious. They could develop what they called Roundup-Ready seeds and sell those to farmers as a package deal: you plant your Roundup-Ready corn, soy, cotton, canola, or sugar beets and spray directly with Roundup herbicide. The weeds in your fields will die and your crops will not. Farmers loved it. It made their lives easier and the bonus, they were hearing, was it was safe enough to drink. The company said, “It has no impact on people or pets and it’s environmentally friendly.” With the release of these herbicide-resistant, genetically engineered crops, we saw glyphosate use skyrocket. It’s now the world’s most widely used herbicide. It went from about 25 million pounds or so used annually in the United States in the 1990s to close to 300 million pounds in 2015. That’s why we now see so much glyphosate in our creeks and rivers, in air samples, and in our food. You found internal documents that show how the company was working to discredit journalists and others who were raising questions about its safety—journalists like you. Yes, I had known that Monsanto was working to undermine me for years and discredit my first book, Whitewash . I was at Reuters from 1998 until 2015. They didn’t like that I was writing about the science showing harm associated with glyphosate and in those last several years, they worked really hard on my editors to try to get me pulled off the beat. I knew they were funding front groups trying to discredit me, but as I read the internal documents, seeing a spreadsheet with my name on it with an action plan and strategies to tear me down—that was eye-opening. My main thought was: If they do that to me—one little gal in Kansas who writes a book or two—imagine what they’re doing to the scientists who are trying to do thorough, independent research. Thanks to this court case, anyone can now read these internal conversations. Can you talk about how these documents became publicly available? Yes, one of Johnson’s lawyers, Brent Wisner, used a loophole in a protective order to get these papers out in the public. Monsanto wanted very much to keep secret these internal records—emails, text messages, things that were quite damning. While they had to give them to the plaintiff’s lawyers, they wanted to keep them sealed so journalists and members of the public couldn’t see them. The judge issued a protective order and it had certain criteria each side had to meet in order to keep the documents sealed. Wisner essentially found a loophole and used it to release them. It was a gutsy move; suffice it to say Monsanto was furious. The internal documents also reveal a coordinated effort by Bayer/Monsanto to try to discredit the highest-level international agency on cancer, which had ruled that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen. Yes, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is an arm of the World Health Organization. Their job is to analyze published peer-reviewed literature on different substances suspected to be carcinogenic and to assess the hazard. They looked at glyphosate because it was so widely used and because there was so much epidemiology and toxicology literature linking it to cancer, particularly non-Hodgkin lymphoma. These were independent scientists at the top of their field, brought in from around the world, with no ties to any company or any activist group, and they determined glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen, with an association of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Typically, their rulings generally don’t make headlines around the world, but the glyphosate classification did, and Monsanto was ready with an attack plan . We saw the plan in their internal documents. Interestingly enough, they put it together before IARC made the decision. Monsanto discussed internally that they expected such a classification. They then went about trying to tear down these individual scientists. At one point, Monsanto involved U.S. lawmakers to get a hearing in the House of Representatives to look at stripping funding from IARC. Let’s talk about the Johnson verdict. What was your reaction when you heard it? I was watching the verdict read live from Australia, where I had been asked to speak about glyphosate. I actually didn’t believe [Johnson’s lawyers] could climb that hill, but the jury came back with a unanimous decision and $250 million in punitive damages because they were so outraged at the evidence of Monsanto’s deception. Where does it go from here? Bayer bought Monsanto in June of 2018 just before the Lee Johnson trial started, so the liability rests with Bayer and Bayer has been fighting back. There have been two subsequent trials . The company lost both of those as well, but they’ve appealed all the verdicts. They’ve lost all the appeals to date, but they’ve been successful in reducing the verdicts. In one of the other trials, the jury found that the evidence of Monsanto’s deception was so egregious they awarded $2 billion in punitive damages. But trial and appellate judges have reduced those awards significantly. Now, Bayer has decided they don’t want any more trials. Three losses were enough. They have agreed to pay $11 billion to settle the existing U.S. litigation. They also put forward a plan in which they would pay about $2 billion into a fund that would cover people who’ve been using Roundup, but who haven’t yet developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma, or just haven’t filed a lawsuit yet. This would be a way to try to accommodate those people. They’re going to send out notices to Home Depot and other places where Roundup is sold. They are trying to determine how to ward off future litigation because of course they want to keep selling their product. And Lee? Lee Johnson finally did get paid after my book went to print, but just a tiny fraction of what the jury had wanted him to receive and what they had ordered in their verdict. He wasn’t expected to live this long. His own attorneys thought that he might die before trial and Monsanto’s attorneys predicted he wouldn’t live beyond November of 2019. He’s still suffering, but he’s able to be with his family and see the impact he’s been able to make from this case and from his activism . Last time I was at Home Depot, I saw a huge Roundup display with no warning labels. They are talking about putting something on the label. They don’t want to put language that says it can cause cancer, but they’re thinking about something that provides a link to a webpage that talks about the science. So despite all this litigation they can’t be required to put a warning label on their products? They certainly could if the EPA was going to stand up to Monsanto. But we’ve seen for more than 40 years that the EPA has not done that. In the book, I share lots of internal documents and records from the EPA essentially saying, “Hey, we think you should put a warning label on it. This looks dangerous.” And we see Monsanto push back and bring political pressure, and then the EPA folds, time and time again. We are seeing other countries step up. Mexico has said that it plans to ban glyphosate. Thailand tried a couple of years ago. Bayer enlisted the help of the State Department and other U.S. officials to put the screws on countries talking about bans , so they wouldn’t. Thailand backed away after the U.S. pressure, but Mexico is saying it will go ahead with the ban, and other countries like Germany and France have gone ahead with it. The science is clear that pesticides like glyphosate are contributing to cancers and reproductive health harms and a whole array of problems. We need to speak out. We need to make food policy as important as foreign policy. This interview is based on a Real Food Media podcast interview , and has been edited for clarity and length.

Fifty years ago, my mother exposed the damage caused by our energy-intensive, environmentally devastating food production system. The struggle to change it continues. By Anna Lappé Anna Lappé and her brother cook with Frances Moore Lappé in their San Francisco home kitchen in the 1980s. “More than the particulars of my mother’s cooking, I remember the details of her political activism,” the author writes. Photo by Nick Allen / Frances Moore Lappé family archives Originally Published in Earth Island Journal , Winter 2021 Nearly every day since March, I’ve been waking up before the sun rises to get some quiet time before my daughters — third and sixth graders now — stumble out of bed. Another school day filled with Zoom, another weekend in semi-lockdown. In these morning hours, I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood. I close my eyes and picture our pale blue house on a windy street at the base of San Francisco’s Bernal Heights; the mural of The Beatles on a neighbor’s garage, John Lennon a blur as I whizzed by on roller skates; the glass jars of beans and rice and spices that lined our kitchen shelves. I’ve been thinking about those early years not just because I’m home so much more with my own kids but because over these past few months I’ve been helping my mother on a project: the 50th anniversary edition of her Diet for a Small Planet , a book she published just before I was born. A book that has shaped my life. My mother wrote the first edition of Diet for a Small Planet when she was just 26, having recently left a graduate program in social work to “go deeper” — as she has always explained it — to understand the “whys” behind the social problems she saw all around her. Her book went on to be read by millions, shaping our collective consciousness on food and hunger for five decades. Her beginner’s eye, she would say, was her greatest gift when she started on the book. At the time, the late 1960s, the “experts” (mostly White men) were ringing the alarm bells, claiming we faced imminent global famine. Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb had just dropped. Images of malnourished children in unnamed African countries filled magazines and newspapers. Curious about the why behind these frightening proclamations, my mom dug into the data in the halls of the Giannini agricultural library at the University of California, Berkeley. What she discovered was, at first, unbelievable: The world was actually producing more than enough food to feed every man, woman, and child on the planet. Indeed, many of the countries hit hard by famine were net exporters of food. The shocking data prompted more inquiry. If there was enough, then the question must change, from Why hunger? to Why hunger in a world of plenty? That line of thinking would shape the insight that runs through the pages of Diet for a Small Planet : The root cause of hunger isn’t a lack of food production, my mother has long said, the root is a lack of democracy, the lack of power to make a stand for what food is grown, where , and by whom . The result? As she detailed in the book: a food system driven by profit, no matter the cost to people or planet. It’s why the grain-fed beef industry was booming, taking land and resources that could have been used to grow food people eat directly to instead graze livestock and produce feed that together deliver to us, in usable calories, only a tiny fraction of calories relative to the resources used. So along with the political analysis, my mom included 140 plant-centered recipes to show that we could nourish ourselves without having to rely on industrialized meat production. Fifty years later, her book’s message is more needed than ever, as we see the consequences of an energy-intensive, environmentally devastating food production system on climate, water resources, insect populations, human health — and much more. Over the years, my mother would feel frustrated at times when, because of all those recipes, the book’s bigger message would sometimes be sidelined. Her proudest media moments were when she could pivot from a question like What did you have for breakfast? to discussing the roots of global hunger. She wanted her readers to tie the very practical questions — What should we put on our plates? — to the broader political ones she was raising. Over the years, as I’ve encountered countless people who have been influenced by my mother’s work, I’ve been happy to report to her that her readers get it. My mother’s life work was never just about what we wanted our plates to look like, but what we wanted the world to look like. Shortly after my mom agreed to do an anniversary edition, I was out to lunch with a friend. “Did I ever tell you that your mother’s book changed my life?” she asked. In sixth grade, she told me, her twin sister had gotten a copy of Diet for a Small Planet and devoured it. “Next thing I knew,” my friend said, smiling, “we were standing outside our local grocery store at 6 p.m. handing out leaflets about the United Farm Workers grape boycott! My entire life’s activism sprang from your mom’s work.” Over the years, I often got asked what it was like growing up with Frances Moore Lappé as a mom. Yes, I do remember the food: no white sugar or white rice. Carob chips instead of chocolate chips. Lots of beans. Froot Loops? Forget about it! But more than the particulars of my mother’s cooking, I remember the details of her political activism. I remember traveling to Guatemala, accompanying her on field investigations into the impact of US foreign policy in Central America; visiting farmworker organizers in rural Ohio where she was researching the injustices embedded in the design of how we produce food; logging long hours preparing fundraiser letters for the nonprofit she co-founded, the Institute for Food and Development Policy. These memories sit alongside, yes, homemade granola and copious rice and beans. For my mother’s life’s work was never just about what we wanted our plates to look like, it was about what we wanted the world to look like. As I have been helping revise the recipes for her 50th anniversary edition of Diet for a Small Planet — sorry, no more soy grits! — I’ve been separated from my mom by a country and Covid-19. When this is all behind us, it will be the longest we’ve gone without seeing each other. As I prepare another meal from one of the new recipes and sit down with my kids in my own blue house across the bridge from San Francisco, I feel a connection to the ongoing work of busting myths about hunger, exposing the misinformation peddled by those in power, and advocating for the more just and healthy food system that has been my mother’s lifelong project. THIS IS MY FINAL Digging Deeper column. When Annie Leonard, now leading Greenpeace USA, asked me to take over this space for her in 2015, I was beyond honored. It has been a dream to share my thoughts with all of you over the years under the amazing editorial hand of first Jason Mark and then Maureen Nandini Mitra and Zoe Loftus-Farren. I am excited to pass the torch to give another voice this page to share their ideas.

Since the 1950s, we have produced 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste. By Anna Lappé Mr. McGuire had no idea how right he was when he told a young Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate: “I just want to say one word to you: Plastics. There’s a great future in plastics.” Since the 1950s, we have produced 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste. Most of it is single-use. Originally Published in Earth Island Journal, Winter 2020 That was 1967. The year Mike Nichols’ now-classic film made waves plastic was just taking off as an everyday consumer product. By 2017, the world would be producing 348 million metric tons of it every year. Since the 1950s, we have produced 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste — the equivalent in weight to 25,000 Empire State Buildings. That’s a lot of plastic. And most of it is single-use, ending up in landfills or littering the environment — never to be reused or recycled. At our peak, we recycled only 9 percent of plastics; today it’s even less. What many don’t realize is that 99 percent of plastic is produced from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels. As the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) put it in their “Fueling Plastics” report: “Fossil fuels and plastic are not only made from the same materials, they are made by the same companies. Exxon is both the gas in your car and the plastic in your water bottle.” As the fossil fuel industry comes under scrutiny for its starring role in the climate crisis, many energy sector companies are quietly turning their attention toward plastics and emerging markets for the industry’s growth. As global energy markets shift toward renewables and electrification, the move toward plastic looks like a smart business decision for these companies. If trends continue, the consumption of oil by the plastics industry could account for as much as one-fifth of the world’s total oil usage within the next several decades, according to CIEL, making plastics a bigger and bigger climate burden. The World Economic Forum predicts that by 2050 emissions associated with plastics could account for 15 percent of the global annual carbon budget. These predictions make it clear: If we want to keep our planet to a limit of 1.5 degrees warming, we’ve got to take on plastics. Not doing so puts in jeopardy our ability to stabilize the climate. So, what can we do? My small city of Berkeley, California — home to just over 100,000 people — made headlines earlier this year when it passed the most aggressive municipal ban on single-use plastic foodware in local restaurants and businesses in the country. (The ban on plastic straws got the most ribbing.) Will changing how we sip in one small town change the world? Of course not, but it is a step in the right direction. The local ordinance was designed not just to ban plastic forks, spoons, containers, and yes, straws, only to have businesses replace them with some other throwaway materials. The effort “rejects throwaway culture altogether,” say Greenpeace’s Annie Leonard and The Ecology Center’s Martin Bourque, who developed and championed the policy, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed. The policy requires that all local businesses make compost bins available, all takeout containers be made from 100 percent certified compostable materials, vendors charge 25 cents for all takeout cups, and all eat-in dining be in reusable foodware. The Ecology Center and other local leaders are also championing reusable alternatives for individuals. The Center even sells stainless steel boba tea straws. Bans on single-use plastic bags are another policy measure that’s taking off, despite industry push back. In the US, California and Hawai’i have joined 32 countries with bans on single-use plastic bags. Across the world, advocates are increasingly getting organized to tackle this global problem. The Plastic Pollution Coalition , an Earth Island project, boasts 1,000 organizations in more than 60 countries working to take on the industry. ExxonMobil may be hoping that McGuire is still right, but if we want a future for the planet, we better hope the future is not in plastics.

A decade after writing a book about agriculture's connection to climate change, Anna Lappé interviews the author of a new study that confirms we can’t bring down emissions without addressing the food system. By Anna Lappé Originally Published in Civil Eats on November 18, 2020 A new study published in Science offers a stark warning about the climate crisis: Even if we completely halted fossil fuel use in the near term, we would still blow through the carbon budget needed to avoid catastrophic climate change unless we change the trajectory of emissions from the global food sector. Although many have warned about the climate impact of modern food production and land use, this new science is soberingly clear, and it has garnered attention around the world. Without radically reducing emissions from agriculture, the research shows we won’t meet the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit average warming to 1.5°C – 2°C degrees. And yet, even those targets still position us to face some pretty extreme climate impacts. Civil Eats talked with Michael Clark, a researcher at the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford and one of the lead authors on the study, about the findings, what they teach us about collective action to move the needle on climate, and how we might build the political will to do so. Why does the food system have such a big climate toll? One of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions from food systems is meat, and within that red meat from ruminants: beef, sheep, goats, and—to a lesser extent—other livestock like pork. The reason why ruminants have a relatively large impact is two-fold: They’re particularly inefficient at converting grass into things we can eat; or, if they’re not being fed grass, converting soy or other feed into food for humans. This matters because you have to include the climate impacts of producing the feed we then give to cows and other ruminants. Another reason why ruminants are particularly high emitters is because during their digestive process, they convert their food into methane, a potent greenhouse gas that they then burp. The other large source of emissions within food systems is from fertilizer use —from how it is processed to emissions from application. Nitrogen naturally converts into nitrous oxide, which is one of the other very potent greenhouse gases. This I think has been a blind spot. We’ve disrupted the carbon cycle, but we’ve disrupted the nitrogen cycle, too. Exactly. Estimates are that humans have doubled the amount of reactive nitrogen in the world—that is human sources of reactive nitrogen are at least as large as the amount of reactive nitrogen that is naturally available. Not ideal. Your findings paint a picture based on current trends. What trends did you track? Very broadly speaking, emissions from the food system are a function of what we eat, how it’s produced, and the size of the population. We looked at these three factors and trends to date and projected out if these patterns continue over the next several decades. What we found at a global scale is that the most important driver is changes in dietary habits; populations eating more food and eating a larger proportion of that food from animal sources, either meat, dairy, or eggs. Population growth is an important driver, but it’s not as important as dietary habit change. And while changes in food production—like having better management techniques and reducing emissions per unit of food—could counter those shifts, it would not be by a huge amount. Now, all this is at a global scale; for any single country, that global pattern may not match up. Diets are changing, but not uniformly. For instance, diets are not changing by a huge amount in the United States, but if you go to a place like China or Brazil, countries experiencing large economic transitions, there are massive dietary shifts happening and with them those emissions are going to be driven up. Do you feel the story of food systems emissions has been late to the game in climate change? Rightfully, a lot of the effort, focus, and political will has targeted emissions abatement through fossil fuels. That makes a huge amount of sense. But we’re getting better knowledge about the impact food has had on the environment—and the trajectory of emissions—and starting to see, thankfully, food becoming a bigger part of the conversation. Talk about some of the main levers for change. First, plant-rich diets: Let’s get into what you mean by that and why this diet shift makes a difference. We mean a reduction in meat, dairy, and eggs and an increase in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, legumes, and so on. What’s critical here is that while the endpoint is similar for everyone in the world, the direction you might need to go to get there will be really different. In the United States, for instance, this shift in diets might mean a typical person eating much less meat and much more fruits and vegetables. The second thing I really want to stress is that these plant-rich diets are associated with pretty large increases in health outcomes. While for this paper we focused on climate, plant-rich diets have enormous co-benefits. Let’s talk about another lever for reducing food system emissions; what you and your co-authors call “healthy calories.” Approximately half the global adult population is eating too much or not enough. In certain countries the figures are even more extreme. For my co-authors and me, the healthy diet lever means—independent of a plant-rich diet—what proportion of calories are coming from fruit, vegetables, and other healthy sources of calories. We know that so many people are not getting the right amounts of food for a healthy diet. Similar to the plant-rich lever, this means in some places, eating a lot less, in other places, it will mean people eating more [healthy foods]. Food waste has gotten a lot more attention in the past few years—in part, I think, because the percent of food that is wasted is so high and because addressing food waste feels so doable. Yes, it’s pretty shocking: About one-third of all food that is produced remains uneaten, ether because it’s thrown away, rots, or otherwise doesn’t get to the people who want to eat it. The sources differ widely by country, sometimes it’s a lack of refrigeration, lack of storage, grain silos, and so on. In the United States, a family of four wastes on average $1,600 worth of produce a year . That’s a pretty big incentive to act. It always surprises people that if the emissions associated with food loss were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world . Let’s talk about what you are seeing in terms of policy responses. One of the joys and complications of working on a global study is that the policy responses are going to look very different wherever you are. We talked earlier about the climate impacts of nitrogen fertilizer use. One policy that has really been effective has been the 1991 European Union Nitrates Directive . Now, when it was passed, it was designed to reduce nitrogen runoff because agricultural sources of runoff were one of the main causes of water pollution in Europe. Since then, fertilizer applications per hectare have decreased by about half, yet crop yields have continued to increase as they were before. It’s just one example of a relatively large geographically scaled policy that is working. While it wasn’t specifically designed to address emissions, it most certainly has had emissions benefits. We can look at farmers choosing different production pathways. Like in some cases adding more crop rotations into their planning or using agroecological approaches, such as planting hedgerows, agroforestry, and more. Honestly, there really is a huge amount that can be done. But it’s important to stress that no single action is going to solve the problem. One of the big food-climate debates is about soil carbon sequestration and livestock. What do you think about those who argue for livestock’s ability to rehabilitate soils ? We know for sure we can be doing a lot better in terms of soil carbon storage. And we are seeing incredible results from a range of strategies, like some I mentioned: planting cover crops , intercropping, and silvopasture , planting hedges between fields that can prevent soil loss—and more. All of these can help sequester more carbon in the soil, but I think the key message should be: Soil carbon sequestration is part of the solution, but it isn’t the only solution. Now, for the debate about cows! The instances where I’ve seen cows or other ruminants’ potential to be net negative in terms of greenhouse gas emissions—after accounting for methane emissions—is over short timescales, in certain conditions, on previously degraded land. So, yes, it may be possible for cows to play a helpful role, but in a limited way. How the cows are raised matters; but how many cows you’re raising matters more. Do you feel like any parts of your paper have been misunderstood as this complex story gets translated for the general public? I actually think the coverage has been good. There are basically three main points and I think the media has been capturing them well: One, food matters to climate and if we continue eating the way we are, it will result in catastrophic climate change; two, there is a lot we can do; third, everyone has a role to play—consumers, businesses, food processors, everyone. I know one question those who work on climate often gets asked is, “Are you optimistic or pessimistic?”—but, I feel I should ask the same of you. I’m laughing because it’s an uncomfortable question to answer. We are starting to move in the right direction, but honestly, we’re not moving anywhere close to as fast as we need to. We need to start acting now. It would have been great to have made these changes years ago, but we didn’t. Right. As they say, the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second best time is today. Exactly. __________________________________________________________________________________ This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

By Amrita Gupta, Anna Lappé & Daniel Moss (Photo from https://www.amritabhoomi.org/ ) Originally Published in Alliance Magazine, on November 8, 2020 Alongside a public health emergency, Covid-19 has unleashed a staggering spike in global hunger . More than a quarter of a billion people are expected to face acute food insecurity as a result of the pandemic. Among the hardest hit are Black, brown, and Indigenous small-scale food producers – and the consumers they feed – from countries already scarred by colonialism, import dependence, and the climate crisis. Yet, these are the very people who are leading movements to address the roots of hunger while responding to the disruptions wrought by Covid-19 Recognising the precarity of an industrial food system that drives farmers into debt and poisons their soil and water, these producers are increasingly embracing agroecology – a way of farming that coexists with natural ecosystems to produce healthy food. At the Agroecology Fund, we acted swiftly to support their mutual aid and solidarity responses to Covid-19 – channeling nearly $1 million through an emergency fund to 59 grassroots organisations across five continents earlier this year. In the process, we learned several key lessons on how to respond to an acute crisis, while deepening transformative change. Lesson 1: Take the lead from grassroots organisations and BIPOC communities Traditional grantmaking deliberations often place an onerous burden on grassroots groups with limited resources for funder engagement. Funders must make their decision-making processes more equitable and expedient. For this emergency fund, we simplified requests for proposals, and streamlined grant disbursements. But making funding processes more accessible is critical beyond moments of crisis. We stand with our peers calling for such transformations in philanthropic practices, including the US-based network HEAL Food Alliance, which urged food systems funders to do more to center racial equity and resource BIPOC communities who are already scaling critical solutions. Lesson 2: Support food sovereignty and food security Last month, the United Nations’ World Food Programme was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for providing food aid to almost 100 million vulnerable people globally. While a powerful recognition of just how urgent food security is, food aid – too often consisting of imported genetically modified (GMO) grains, ultra-processed foods, and surplus commodities – actually undermines local economies and small food producers. For nearly a decade, the Agroecology Fund has prioritised food security without compromising food sovereignty – the right of peoples to determine what they eat and how it is produced. Social movements like our partner, La Via Campesina, representing 200 million peasants worldwide, remind us that we can only end hunger by supporting the small producers who already feed the majority of the world’s population. Increasingly, governments and UN agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Environment Programme (UNEP) endorse principles of agroecology. It is becoming clearer to policymakers that strengthening local resilience means supporting communities to grow and distribute emergency relief in times of crisis even as they steward ecosystems and ensure a sustainable food supply through the year. Lesson 3: Invest in long-term resilience To some, addressing the Covid-19 hunger crisis may seem an impossible trade off between providing urgently needed handouts or investing in long-term solutions. Our emergency grantees show it’s possible to rapidly mobilise mutual aid while strengthening long-term food security in their communities. From the Philippines to Argentina, through interventions as diverse as online marketplaces and microcredit programs, our grassroots partners are helping their communities’ weather the crisis and build resilience. In Zimbabwe, when market closures left thousands of farmers stuck with perishable produce, our grantee Pelum Zimbabwe mapped local supply chains to reveal healthy food options to consumers and policymakers. In India, Amrita Bhoomi launched a producers’ cooperative so farmers could supply healthy, locally grown food at fair prices. Grantees we support have also been working to shape the policy response to the crisis. In Brazil, for example, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) has been advocating for public procurement sourced from agroecological farmers. Lesson 4: Tap the power of pooled funds Faced with the scale of today’s interlocking crises, collective action is essential. Pooled funds help individual donors move swiftly to make well-informed investments. Groups like ours – a pooled fund of more than 30 donors – and other networks including Thousand Currents and Grassroots International have deep connections to social movements that can help steer resources towards transformational change. As one of our fund donors said, ‘On my own, I would never know which grassroots groups in the Philippines or Brazil or Uganda to support to address the food crises unfolding there.’ Pooled funds also help generate positive peer pressure among collaborating organisations to give more. Promisingly, many of our peers are offering matching grants, disentangling donations from asset returns, and even initiating spend downs in response to this global crisis. Today’s challenges are immense; tomorrow’s will be no less so. We must work together to fund grassroots-led humanitarian relief and activism that builds toward lasting, systemic change, ensuring our charitable dollars function not as a Band-Aid, but as part of a global effort to eradicate the roots of hunger in all its complexity. Amrita Gupta leads communications at the Agroecology Fund and Daniel Moss is its executive director. Anna Lappé directs the food and democracy program of the Panta Rhea Foundation and is a member of the fund.

The World Food Programme’s Nobel prize is timely – but food security depends on radically transforming our food systems By Amrita Gupta, Anna Lappé & Daniel Moss | Agroecology Fund ARCHIVE PHOTO: A farmer harvests crops in a ricefield in Pulilan, Bulacan province March 3, 2016. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco Originally Published in Reuters on October 15, 2020 During the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, as lockdown restrictions scrambled supply chains, the national peasant movement Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas set up an online farmers’ market and delivery system on Facebook, so urban dwellers in Manila could access locally grown grain, fruits, and vegetables. In Argentina, as thousands lost their jobs and homes, the grassroots organization Union de Trabajadores de la Tierra (Union of Land Workers), supplied vulnerable communities with fresh food. These “sovereign food canteens'', said UTT’s Lucas Tedesco, are powerful reminders that small producers “are the ones who feed our fellow citizen s.” In Zimbabwe, when markets shuttered and farmers’ crops were left to rot in their fields, the farmers’ organization Pelum Zimbabwe mapped farmers, transporters, processors, and other vendors, to connect them to consumers and demonstrate to Zimbabwean policymakers that better access to locally-grown healthy foods reduces hunger, and strengthens community resilience. With the pandemic leaving so many families uncertain about their next meal, the Nobel Peace Prize award to the United Nations’ World Food Programme is timely. COVID-19 has plunged millions around the world into poverty; global hunger is likely to double . By the end of 2020, the number of people facing acute food insecurity could swell to a quarter of a billion. But let’s be clear: We’ll never be truly food secure without radically transforming our food systems. Even as it acknowledged the honour, the UN agency, which provides food assistance to almost 100 million people worldwide, noted that aid is not a long-term solution. Gernot Laganda, head of climate and disaster risk reduction at the WFP, stated clearly : "You won't get to zero hunger with humanitarian aid alone.” As food systems funders supporting agroecology, we have seen that food handouts are not an effective antidote to hunger. Agroecology goes beyond tackling the incidence of hunger to uproot its structural causes. In recent months, we have seen clearly how movements for agroecology fostered networks of producers—in the Philippines, Zimbabwe, and beyond— able to feed themselves and their communities in this moment of crisis. By farming in sync with nature, agroecological farmers grow abundant and diverse foods, regenerate natural ecosystems, strengthen resilience to health and climate shocks, and bring healthy food to local markets. More than a set of farming techniques, agroecology is a movement for social justice, improving nutrition without compromising food sovereignty—the right of peoples to determine what they eat and how it is produced. Agroecology resists the misguided Western policies that have impoverished smallholders worldwide, policies like promoting synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and hybrid seeds through the Green Revolution historically, and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa today. By directly empowering family farmers, agroecology diminishes the need for imported food aid - too often ultra-processed foods, surplus commodity crops, and GMO grains that are a boon to agribusiness while undermining small farmer livelihoods. In the past few years, agencies within the United Nations have publicly recognized the importance of agroecology to end hunger. In 2018, former U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization Director General José Graziano da Silva issued an urgent challenge to the global community: “It’s time to scale up the implementation of agroecology.” We’ve been pleased to see that initiatives such as the World Food Programme’s Home Grown School Feeding Initiative link “school feeding programmes with local smallholder farmers” in 46 countries including Kenya, Honduras, and Haiti. But the agency must do far more to strengthen local food economies. In 2018, only one third of the 3.6 million metric tons of WFP’s total food purchases were characterized as “locally grown commodities,” and less than 4% of the organization’s food aid ($31 million) was purchased directly from smallholder farmers. (WFP data does not report what percentage may have been agroecologically produced.) This year’s Nobel Peace Prize is a powerful recognition of just how urgent food security is. We urge the WFP to seize this moment to embrace agroecology, and address the roots of hunger, learning lessons from the food leaders we’re funding in the Philippines, Argentina, Zimbabwe, and beyond. Private philanthropy alone cannot offer sufficient support to the vibrant, global agroecology movement. We need the WFP to play a lead role, deploying public resources to support innovative civil society organizations and government agencies. When we support humanitarian relief that builds lasting change, we ensure our dollars don’t just deliver one-time handouts, but drive a fundamental transformation of our food systems. Only then will we yank up the roots of hunger and seed a more peaceful, equitable, and resilient world

If companies are really committed to Black lives, their statements of support should include an honest reckoning with their own products and practices. By Anna Lappé Despite being aware that its talc-based powders might contain asbestos, Johnson & Johnson pushed these products in the United States and beyond, specifically targeting Black and Brown women. Photo by Austin Kirk . Originally Published in Earth Island Journal , Autumn 2020 In a virtual town hall in June, Coca-Cola’s Chairman and CEO James Quincy said: “Diversity and inclusion are among our greatest strengths … We must put our resources and energy toward helping end the cycle of systemic racism.” Dow Chemical’s Chairman and CEO Jim Fitterling similarly committed to being an “ally” helping overcome “systemic oppression.” And Johnson & Johnson’s Chairman and CEO Alex Gorsky stated, “unequivocally that racism in any form is unacceptable.” These three proclamations echo others penned by Fortune 500 companies since the public reckoning with police violence and systemic racism has swept across the country in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May. But examine the impact of these companies on the lived experience of Black people and it’s clear these commitments fall far short of restitution. Consider Johnson & Johnson. Internal company documents have revealed that the company knew since at least 1957 that its talc-based powders could be contaminated with asbestos, a possible carcinogen, for which there is no known safe level of exposure. Despite these concerns, the company pushed these products in the United States and beyond, specifically targeting Black and Brown women. The company’s marketing plans included a race-based distribution model, moving baby powder samples through churches and beauty salons in African American and Latino neighborhoods, and seeking marketing agencies specializing in promotions to “ethnic consumers.” The impact is clear: A study of Black women who used these powders found they had more than a 40 percent increased risk of ovarian cancer compared to Black women who didn’t use them. Several weeks after its CEO’s Black Lives Matter statement, a Missouri court ruled Johnson & Johnson must pay $2.1 billion in damages to nearly two dozen women whose ovarian cancers were linked to its talc-based powders. Or consider Coca-Cola, whose CEO made a $2.5 million commitment in June to racial justice charities. Put aside, for a moment, that such a pledge is a paltry 0.27 percent of the company’s annual US advertising spend. The company could have used this political uprising to honestly reflect on how its business practices continue to harm Black communities. Its signature sugary drinks, for example, are a driving force behind one of the biggest public health crises of our time — diet-related illnesses like type 2 diabetes, kidney diseases, and heart disease — that disproportionately impact African Americans. Drinking as little as one 12-ounce sugary drink a day increases your chances of diabetes by 26 percent. A staggering fact made more worrisome in the face of findings that people with type 2 diabetes have a significantly increased Covid-19 mortality rate. When it comes to sugary drinks, Coca-Cola and its peers still disproportionately target Black consumers, particularly young Black people. Photo by Dreamstime. Yet a recent report on sugary-drinks marketing found Coca-Cola and its peers still disproportionately target Black consumers, particularly young Black people. As a result, Black teens have been seeing roughly 2.3 times as many ads for sugary drinks and energy drinks compared to White teens. Then there’s Dow, whose Chairman and CEO’s Black Lives Matter statement made no mention of the impact the company’s manufacturing plants and products have had on communities of color. Dow, one of largest petrochemical producers in Louisiana, for example, is one of the many corporations that have located toxic manufacturing facilities along an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, home to many predominantly Black communities. The rates of cancer in the region are a staggering 50 times greater than the US average, giving the area the unwelcome name, Cancer Alley. Dow. Johnson & Johnson. Coca-Cola. These are just three of the many companies claiming allegiance with those fighting racial injustice around the country. But as the old cliché reminds us: Actions speak louder than words. If these companies were really committed to Black lives, their statements would have included an honest reckoning with their own products and practices, past and present, and a pledge to act on such a reckoning.