Living Democracy, Feeding Hope

Originally Published on the Center for Humans & Nature , January 31, 2020 Years ago, the late German physicist Hans Peter Duerr—wearing a huge grin—reminded me that “in biological systems there are no parts, only participants.” [1] And, today, the climate crisis reminds all of us of this truth—as well as enables us to see avenues for healing our planet that have, too long, been hidden from view. Almost fifty years ago, tackling the roots of hunger to write Diet for a Small Planet, I was forced to widen my vision: rejecting the then-dominant notion of hunger as the consequence of quantitative lack and coming to see hunger as a predictable outcome of unbalanced power relationships—those actively creating hunger out of plenty. [2] Now, to meet the UN’s ten-year deadline for cutting carbon release, I again realize we must all see with new eyes: moving from a frame of separateness to an ecological worldview of connectedness, as Hans Peter had done. It’s not enough to think in terms of staying within nature’s limits. Our goal as a species must be aligning ourselves as participants with the rest of life. For example, as we mobilize to stop fossil fuels’ great harms, we need not let this essential focus blind us to the flipside of the carbon equation: the multiple, life-enhancing ways we can enable the Earth to store more carbon. That challenge is all about relationships, both with nature and with each other. A key piece in that essential rethinking is our conception of how we feed ourselves. Additional carbon—potentially captured by restoring degraded farm, forest, and pasture lands—along with other earth-centered mitigation, could by 2050 offset carbon equal to more than half of 2018-level carbon emissions, reports the Global Evergreening Alliance. [3] One 2013 study estimated that introducing ecological farming, including cover crops and agroforestry (trees and crops in the same field) throughout the EU holds the “technical potential” to sequester 37 percent of 2007 EU carbon emissions. [4] For climate and so much else, today’s crisis began with a shift in perception, this one destructive as the industrial revolution—and more recently what became known (misleadingly) as the Green Revolution—unleashed corporate-controlled, chemical agriculture. In it, farming was reduced to four steps—clear, plant, cut, remove—in which soil became more substrate than living entity to nurture. Some consequences? Farming is contributing to the degradation of a third of soil worldwide to the point that, by one estimate, a mere sixty years of healthy soil remain. [5] Moreover, agriculture, forestry, and other land use now produces nearly a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, reports the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [6] We can, however, reverse this damage, and some of the world’s poorest farmers are showing us the way using more sophisticated approaches to growing food and providing fuel in which our lives improve as we help cool the Earth. Instead of climate culprit, through these practices, agriculture is a piece of the climate cure. In this learning, Africa is key. From the late 1960s to the early ‘80s, famine and the African Sahel were conjoined in my mind. In that period, one hundred thousand people died of starvation, and Niger, now the world’s poorest country, was hard hit. [7 , 8] But when the rains finally returned, another way of being with the earth began to emerge; and since that tragic time, Niger’s farmers have rehabilitated millions of acres by carefully managing the natural regeneration of 200 million trees—sequestering carbon, improving soil fertility, and often doubling crop yields, as well as providing livestock fodder and firewood—all ensuring food security for 2.5 million people. [9, 10] Niger’s progress—led by small farmers together making and enforcing rules—has been celebrated as perhaps the largest regreening transformation in all of Africa. First, though, a change in perception was required. French colonial powers in this region of West Africa had long dictated that trees were property of the state. Farmers could be fined, or even jailed, for messing with them—thus separating trees in the minds of farmers from anything positive. “Even if farmers understood the benefits of trees, they weren’t ‘theirs,’ so they felt no responsibility to protect them,” agroforestry-expert Tony Rinaudo of World Vision Australia explained. [11] Many thought it was “better to cut and benefit from the trees on my own land, than to allow somebody else to do so,” he said. Thus, between the 1950s and 1980s, in defiance of government decree, farmers almost totally wiped out trees (and shrubs, too). [12] “A change in mindset began in 1984,” reports Rinaudo, whose work helped trigger the shift, earning him the nickname “forest maker.” [13] Widely heard radio news of deforestation was followed by severe famine in Niger’s Maradi region—creating a link in farmers’ minds between drought (and hence hunger) and the loss of trees. At the same time, the international NGO Serving in Mission launched a food-for-work program that required communities to try a different approach: Encourage regrowth of trees right in their fields. [14] The practice is called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration. [15] Lo and behold, farmers discovered that their crops did better when growing among the trees. Trees reduce wind damage, abet rainwater filtration, and cool the soil, lessening evaporation. Plus, trees provide wood for cooking and building, as well as to sell. For village women burdened with having to walk miles to find enough wood, this handy supply was a huge boon. Farmers had several favorite species they liked to regenerate on their land. One, the gao (Faidherbia albida) has particularly advantageous traits, including a vast root system stabilizing the soil and thus reducing erosion as well as drawing nitrogen from the air and fertilizing the soil. Also, unusual for local trees, the gao drops its leaves during the rainy season, allowing more sunlight to reach crops just when they most need it. Yet, reports Rinaudo, it still casts a low but beneficial shade in the searing conditions of the African Sahel. Gao-nourished soil also holds water better, particularly helpful in drought years. [16] And in the dry season when there’s little fodder for livestock, gaos provide them nourishing seedpods. Also helpful to this transition, the government’s stance towards trees evolved. Even after Niger won independence in 1960, its Forestry Service continued confiscating “illegally harvested” wood products from farmers, suppressing a much-needed income source, reports Rinaudo. Finally, though, in the late 80s, the Maradi district forestry department allowed for an experiment: It began permitting farmers to harvest wood from trees they regenerated on their land. Although they still lacked formal rights to trees in the Maradi region, the change enhanced farmers’ sense of control, enabling the natural regeneration approach to take off. According to Dennis Garrity of the Global EverGreening Alliance, today such farmer-led regreening is also taking off in four nearby countries: Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal. [17] Together with Niger, these four countries now benefit from 52 million acres of agroforestry—about 17 million in Niger and 35 million spread across in the other four countries. [18] Garrity stresses, however, that the Sahel is “still one of the highest risk regions of the entire world, with temperature rising 1.5° over the last thirty years and due to rise by 2° C by 2035 and by 3°–5° C by 2050. Yet poor farmers are taking much more control of their lives.” [19] Roger Leakey, another world authority on agroforestry, sees nearby Cameroon’s agricultural progress as offering even bigger lessons .[20] He calls the approach “multi-functional agriculture.” In Cameroon, agroforestry isn’t brand new: Even ten years ago, nearly five hundred dispersed communities were on board. With as many as one hundred and twenty trees per farm, crop yields doubled or tripled. But Leakey underscores that several additional steps were necessary before agroforestry could help lift communities out of poverty. Villagers collected germplasm from the many fruits and vegetables that they had in prior times gathered from forests. Then, with help from scientists at the World Agroforestry Center, they were able to create tree nurseries, selling selected cultivars from trees with the most desirable traits. This creative effort generated new economic opportunities. This hunger-busting, carbon-storing, income-generating approach has transformed lives, enabling members to invest, for example, in water “standpipes,” greatly improving community health. No wonder, Leakey reports, more youth are remaining in their communities instead of migrating to cities; and a few are returning to take advantage of the new opportunities. Beyond Africa, agroforestry is also taking root in several Asian countries. [21] And, on the other side of the Earth, agroforestry is progressing, too. In early 2019, Mexico’s government allocated $786 million to an agroforestry jump-start, the Planting Life Program. [22] Placed, interestingly, within the Secretariat of Well-Being (not agriculture) Planting Life is designed for regions rich in biodiversity but where family incomes fall “below the line of rural well-being.” [23] The goal is greater long-term prosperity for almost a quarter million farmers on small plots by enabling them to plant 2.5 million acres of fruit and timber trees while also maintaining the traditional “milpa” practice of growing a variety of crops in the same field. Its first phase is ambitious: The government will invest in farms, covering 1.4 million acres, each to receive $262 each month as well as plants, supplies, tools, technical support, and training to fulfill the plan. [24] And north of the border? Here in the US, tribal communities historically practiced agroforestry, and today organizations such as Savanna Institute are facilitating its spread. [25] Plus, research at the US Department of Agriculture promotes it .[26] The University of Missouri houses one of the world’s leading centers contributing to the science underlying agroforestry, the Center for Agroforestry, established in 1998. [27] My farmer friend in Missouri, Molly Rockamann, Founding Director of EarthDance Organic Farm School in Ferguson, has gained a lot from the Missouri Center’s research—for example, an approach to agroforestry that her farm uses called “alley cropping” (i.e., crops growing between rows of trees). [28] “When we bought the farm,” Molly told me, “the first thing we were excited to do was plant a ton of fruit trees on it.” After only seven years, more than two hundred trees now enrich this fourteen-acre farm in a St. Louis suburb, becoming my US model for how agroforestry can work on a small scale. So, to prevent climate catastrophe, let us restore degraded soil and allow trees to flourish—enabling the poorest of our Earth to gain in power and dignity. For these reasons and more, we can replace the still-too-dominant image of successful farming: No longer envisioning vast chemical-dependent monocultures, but fields alive in crops and trees, participating together in the service of life. __________________________________________________________________ [4] Aertsens, J., Nocker, L. D., & Gobin, A. (2013). Valuing the carbon sequestration potential for European agriculture. Land Use Policy, 31, 584–594. doi: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2012.09.003 [18] Gray Tappan, United States Geological Survey, personal communication, 2018. [19] Campbell, M. M., Casterline, J., Castillo, F., Graves, A., Hall, T. L., May, J. F., … Zulu, E. M. (2014). Population and climate change: who will the grand convergence leave behind? The Lancet Global Health, 2(5). doi: 10.1016/s2214-109x(14)70021-x

Originally Published on Medium on December 15,2019 Migrant from rural Mexico awaits transport to the United States. (Photo: © David Bacon dbacon@igc.org) The following is excerpted from Chapter 8 of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (New Press 2019). The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provoked a wave of migration to the United States. Many of those migrants were coming from the post-NAFTA disaster that was rural Mexico. The country’s three million maize farmers were under assault. Their government had eliminated key agencies that supported small-scale producers, such as CONASUPO, which bought and marketed basic grains at supported prices. In its modernization push, the government had also forced through a modification of the Mexican constitution, written in the wake of the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century, which recognized communal rural property, as ejidos or as communal lands in indigenous areas. The constitutional reform created a path to privatization, which many feared would result in the dispossession of poor farmers. And then there were NAFTA’s reduced tariffs. To deepen the assault, the government had unilaterally decided to forego the transition periods for most agricultural tariffs, which would have phased them out over 5-15 years to allow a more orderly adjustment of these sensitive markets. From day one of NAFTA, Mexico opened its doors and maize farmers got no transitional tariff protection. U.S. goods certainly poured through those open doors. By 2007, U.S. exports to Mexico of wheat, cotton, and rice had all increased more than 500% over pre-NAFTA levels. Meat exports jumped as well, with beef up 278%, poultry 363%, and pork a remarkable 707%. Soybean exports went up 159%. Maize exports increased more than 400%. Worse still for Mexican farmers, those imports entered at dumping-level prices, below what it cost to produce them. In part, that was because the U.S. Congress added insult to NAFTA’s injury with its 1996 farm bill. The Orwellian “Freedom to Farm Act” eliminated all vestiges of supply management, which had been the cornerstone of U.S. agricultural policies since Henry A. Wallace introduced them during the Great Depression. Their demise meant that the U.S. government no longer used a mix of price supports, reserves, and land set-asides to manage the precarious balance between supply and demand, which without government intervention often saw supplies outstripping demand and prices falling to unsustainable levels. Surprise: the reforms created an immediate crisis when prices plummeted. Millions of acres of land that had been held out of agriculture came back into production. Land planted to eight major U.S. crops increased 6% and crop prices fell, prompting a farm crisis that threatened to provoke a run on rural banks. The government stepped in with a series of emergency payments to farmers, which evolved into the mix of farm subsidies we see to this day. Farm program costs increased from their pre-1996 levels of around $10 billion per year to around $20 billion per year. So Mexican farmers weren’t just facing an import flood of competitively priced farm products, they were being asked to compete with dumped goods.... (...read the full excerpt on Medium ...)

Digging Deeper: Going Beneath the Headlines Photo by Sven/Flickr Originally Published on Earth Island Journal , Winter 2019. INSTRUCTIONS ON THE packaging of Monsanto’s biggest-selling weed killers Roundup and RangerPro tell you to wear long-sleeved shirts, long pants, shoes, and socks. They tell you to wash your hands before “eating, drinking, chewing gum, using tobacco, or using the toilet.” But there is no warning that exposure to even trace amounts of these pesticides may cause terminal cancer. Nor will you be told that the World Health Organization ruled in 2015 that glyphosate, the active ingredient in these weed killers, is a probable human carcinogen. But in the wake of the first successful legal case tying these products to health risks, more people are becoming aware of their toxicity. In August 2018, a jury in San Francisco Superior Court found Monsanto responsible for its failure to warn users about the risk of RangerPro and Roundup, and determined the company knew or should have known about these risks. The jury awarded school groundskeeper Dwayne “Lee” Johnson $289 million, finding that exposure to Monsanto’s weed-killer was a substantial factor in causing his cancer. More than 8,000 people are engaged in legal cases against Monsanto, which has been acquired by chemical giant, Bayer. Despite the verdict, glyphosate-based products like Roundup and RangerPro are still widely used in landscaping, from elementary schools to colleges, from road medians to playgrounds. The good news is communities are waking up to the hidden threats of pesticide use and building momentum to do something about it. The Organic Consumers Association, which had been asking retailers to stop carrying Roundup for years, is launching a campaign to inspire school districts to go herbicide-free. “The examples are out there of school districts that show it can be done,” says Katherine Paul, the group’s associate director. A movement is brewing on college campuses, too, tapping into concerns among students. My former intern, Mackenzie Feldman, is one of them. Her interest in this issue started several years ago at a UC Berkeley Beach Volleyball practice. “I showed up and my coach said: ‘If you shank any balls [volleyball talk for passing a ball off the court], don’t chase it. Groundskeepers have just sprayed here.’” She was stunned. The incident prompted Feldman and teammate Bridget Gustafson to launch an herbicide-free UC Berkeley campaign. They galvanized students and met with campus officials, including the school’s grounds manager, who expressed a willingness to try something different. And they helped secure a grant from Beyond Pesticides, a national organization that helps communities transition away from toxic pesticides. First up: highly trafficked places like the school’s popular lawns, Memorial Glade and Faculty Glade. Every day, thousands of people use these fields or walk by them: Coeds lie on the grass; babies, dogs, and students play on the fields. My daughters’ elementary school picnics there on field trips to campus. Beyond Pesticides board member Chip Osborne, a professional horticulturalist, was brought in to teach UC groundskeepers a new way of managing turf to prevent weeds from growing. The key is to avoid “regrettable substitutions,” swapping out glyphosate for something equally, or more, toxic. “We want to discourage a ‘product-centered approach,’” explains Drew Toher, Beyond Pesticides’ community resource and policy director. “Instead, we promote a systems-based one, which focuses on enhancing soil biology to promote healthy landscaping.” Today, the two main green spaces on campus are on their way to being herbicide-free; the beach volleyball court already is. And Feldman, who has since graduated, is developing a campaign to inspire the entire UC system to rethink its reliance on toxic herbicides in grounds management. In the wake of the Johnson ruling, there will be more Mackenzie Feldmans: People who look around their communities and ask, Why? Why are we using toxic chemicals when there are solutions at our fingertips that carry no risk at all? There is no comprehensive list of every city, campus, or school district that has passed a pesticide-free policy, but Beyond Pesticides has been trying to track them: To date, their tally totals 155 local ordinances that address some aspect of pesticide management on public lands. And there will surely be many more cities and schools that get inspired by this vision of a toxic-free future — yours could be next.

If we believe something is essential—as in fixing our broken democracy and confronting the climate crisis—we’ve shown over and over throughout our long history that we can indeed do whatever it takes. Originally Published on Common Dreams, November 20, 2019 “Despair is humanity’s worst enemy.” Now, that’s a declaration I make often, which might imply that I’ve conquered it. But, having spent recent weeks with eyes locked on climate-catastrophe reports, this morning despair started closing in on me. Whoa, I thought to myself… “Your twitter ID is “’hope monger.’ You’d better get a grip.” So, okay…how do we disarm this powerful enemy? Well, here’s my attempt at an answer: ten realizations that over the years have slowly taken shape in me, and I hope are helpful to you. Please note their grounding premise: Despair lives in isolation, while useful hope arises in connection. 1. Appreciate a surprising truth: The only choice we don’t have is whether to change the world. In a universe in which all is connected—and in continuous change—even a choice not to act has reverberations we can never measure. In our interconnected world “there are no parts, only participants,” the late German physicist Hans Peter Duerr once reminded me. No one is utterly powerless. 2. Dig deep to energize a sense of purpose. If we can see how our life choices touch the root causes of our global crises, even our small acts seem worth the effort. And, how do we get to the root? My short answer: We never stop asking “the question behind the question.” In 1971, a series of questions started me on my way to write Diet for a Small Planet. At the time, humanity was near panic as experts reported the world was running out of food. So, I asked, really? Is hunger the result of scarcity? Question after question drew me along a path, until I got to the one question that holds my attention right now: Why are we together creating a world that as individuals none of us would choose? This huge question continues to energize me because part of my answer is that we are where we are because our belief systems can serve as blinders. One often hears “seeing is believing,” but I’ve learned the reverse is truer, “Believing is seeing.” So, if we don’t believe deep change is possible, we won’t see opportunities all around for us to grab. And, of course, this ah-ha has led to a string of new questions calling me. 3. Keep in sight the “bucket” our “drops” are filling. Too often the lament “Oh, I’m just a drop in the bucket” is just another way of saying “I really don’t count.” But, think about it. On a rainy night, buckets fill up fast; so, being a mere drop may not be a problem at all. Knowing we’re a drop can feel glorious if we can see the vessel we are filling. In this moment, for example, I’m deeply distressed by our democracy’s daily battering, but I stay sane when I see the “bucket” my drops can fill in the growing Democracy Movement, now progressing in numerous states and cities. And, it feels great. Just one example? Automatic Voter Registration--proven to increase voting--has now spread to sixteen states and D.C. 4.Act now. Act often. When despair hovers, I try to recall the best advice of my philosophical teachers: More than thoughts alone, action redoes our mental and emotional lives. So, we can preach to ourselves all we want but remain blue and overwhelmed. Whereas choosing to act in itself immediately signals our brains that we’re not powerless. 5. Act not from guilt (“I should”) but to fulfill our deeply human need to experience power (“I can!”) The Latin root of power is posse “to be able.” Our shared need is not “power over others” but having a voice that’s heard in common problem solving. We can learn to celebrate it. 6. Align everyday action with aspiration. Every choice we make that affirms our values makes us more convincing to ourselves and thus to others. Whether it’s voting or shifting to public transport, we know our individual acts in themselves aren’t enough. Public action—changing rules and norms—is essential. Yet, to believe “the world can change” it sure helps if we experience ourselves as capable of change. 7. Risk what scares us. Making deep, despair-disarming change requires more than shifting one’s eating habits or adding solar panels. It requires courage: doing what scares us—whether it’s speaking out when we know others won’t agree or volunteering for the first time in a political campaign. It’s doing what we thought we could not do. Though scary, the rewards can be huge—unexpected bonding with strangers, deep learning, and letting go of feelings of powerlessness. And a reward we may never see? Our courage is contagious. Someone is always watching. 8. Choose our companions with care. Because humans are not just self-seeking atoms but are shaped moment to moment by connection with all we touch—especially those closest to us—whom we become depends greatly on others’ approval. So, to become more courageous, hang out with courage! We can seek out those gutsier than we are and…we can’t help it…we’ll become more like them. 9. Keep handy a mental list of surprises. Think of big, positive turns in our common life that you’d have given virtually zero chance of ever happening…until they did. Review regularly! An example for me? Growing up in Texas, I’d have said, nah, Lyndon Johnson would never lead on civil rights, as he’d voted against every single piece of related legislation for decades. Never, until he did, even introducing the 1965 Voting Rights Bill with the Civil Rights’ refrain—“We shall overcome.” Or, in more recent times: In 2006, what probability would you have given our having an African American president two years later? Probably slim. Bottom line? Humility is in order. We can’t know what might be the next surprise. 10. Seek out and share solutions stories. Unfortunately, major media specialize in fear and shock. They rarely bring us stories of progress. Did you know for example, that if Texas were a country, it would be world’s fifth biggest producer of wind energy? And several other red states are leading the way in renewable energy. Sharing such stories, we open others to possibility. It is truly a revolutionary act we can do daily. Finally, please note: We needn’t be optimists to disarm despair. Optimism suggests confidence of positive outcomes, and that’s hard for me to come by. But, fortunately, humans don’t require certainty in order to act. If we believe something is essential—as in fixing our broken democracy and confronting the climate crisis—we’ve shown over and over throughout our long history that we can indeed do whatever it takes. Right now, for many of us, confronting three crises—climate chaos, the assault on democracy, and extreme economic unfairness—feels essential; and to jump in, all we need is a sense that there’s a possibility our acts can make a difference. That’s why I think of myself as “possibilist,” enabling me to remain—most of the time—an unapologetic “hope monger.” And it works.

Certain policies, strongly promoted by the Gates Foundation, open Africa to the multinational seed companies in the name of modernization, but they undermine climate resilience and food security for Africa’s small-scale farmers. Originally Published on Common Dreams , November 1, 2019 Last month in Ghana, Agnes Kalibata, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, congratulated an illustrious group of corporate and government leaders for “leapfrogging into the future” in their efforts to “modernize” African agriculture with high-yield commercial seeds, fertilizers, and other technologies. Unfortunately, such policies are leapfrogging right over Africa’s small-scale farmers. We have seen no such progress on the ground in Africa. Not only are these policies failing to address chronic rural poverty and hunger, they are doing little to improve nutrition, health, and climate resilience. African farmers have a better idea, grounded in their own experiences and their increasing struggles to grow food in the face of a changing climate. Ecological agriculture, using fewer, not more, chemical inputs, is showing the way forward, as scientists help farmers reduce costs, increase soil fertility, raise more diverse, healthy, and culturally appropriate food crops, and adapt their farms to climate change. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation initiated the latest effort to modernize African agriculture. It launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in 2006 with the ambitious goal of doubling productivity and incomes for 30 million farm families by 2020. There is little evidence AGRA will come anywhere near achieving those goals. Fed by heavy doses of government subsidies for commercial seeds and synthetic fertilizers, evidence suggests that AGRA has promoted monocultures of a few staple crops, reduced crop and diet diversity, undermined soil fertility, and produced disappointing gains in productivity and farmer incomes. Ten years into AGRA, Global Hunger Index scores remained in the “serious” or “alarming” categories for 12 of the 13 AGRA countries. Productivity has risen very slowly even for AGRA’s narrow range of priority staple crops. Of Africa’s top five corn producers, Nigeria and Kenya actually saw declining yields. Even where production increased, such as in Zambia, the gains failed to translate into reductions in rural poverty. Some 78 percent of rural Zambians still live in extreme poverty. And the subsidies enticed farmers into reducing production of more nutritious and drought-resistant local food crops. Across AGRA countries there was a 35 percent drop in land planted to millet, a hardy native grain, with production falling by nearly half. This makes small-scale farmers more, not less, vulnerable to climate change. Farmers risk going into debt to purchase the inputs, which often fail to increase production enough to pay for the next year’s seeds and fertilizer. By relying on a single crop, farmers lose diet diversity and put their families’ food security at risk if that one crop fails. Their soil grows less fertile, more acidic, from the overreliance on synthetic fertilizer. African farmers have a better way. Agroecology is giving farmers the kinds of innovation they need, farming with nature to promote the soil-building practices that “agricultural modernization” often undermines. Multiple food crops are grown in the same field. Compost, manure, and biofertilizers – not fossil-fuel-based fertilizer – are used to fertilize fields. Biological pest control decreases pesticide use. Researchers work with farmers to improve the productivity of their seeds rather than replacing them with commercial seeds farmers need to buy every year and douse with fertilizer to make them grow. The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) has documented the effectiveness of agroecology, now widely promoted among its member organizations. In Kenya, farmers have created a network of community seed banks to identify, save, and distribute nutritious and productive varieties of local food crops, the kind being lost to the green revolution push. In Malawi women farmers identified 300 vegetables and planted them using permaculture techniques, a highly productive form of agroecology. This has improved their income, nutrition, and health considerably. In Tigray, Ethiopian farmers and local allies experimented with improving their land through soil and water conservation techniques. They fared much better than those using chemical-based fertilizers. They supplemented this using well-established push-pull biological pest control as well as other techniques and increased their income and improved their health. The program in Ethiopia is now accepted as government policy. It is unfortunate that many of these promising innovations are threatened by national seed policies that threaten to outlaw farmers’ rights to save, exchange, and sell seeds. Such policies, strongly promoted by the Gates Foundation, open Africa to the multinational seed companies in the name of modernization, but they undermine climate resilience and food security for Africa’s small-scale farmers. Instead of paying African governments to push commercial seeds and fertilizers, leapfrogging right over their own farmers, the Gates Foundation should be pressing governments to incorporate agroecology into their mandated Climate Adaptation Plans. That is the sustainable path into an uncertain future. *Million Belay is the coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. *Timothy A. Wise directs the Land and Food Rights Program at the U.S.-based Small Planet Institute and is a Senior Researcher at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute. Wise is the author of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (The New Press).

Thanks to a union of land cooperatives, people in Puebla have food sovereignty and education in Nahuatl instead of mega-projects and a Walmart. Originally Published on Yes! Magazine, October 24, 2019 In Cuetzalán, a collection of remote villages in the northeastern corner of the Mexican state of Puebla, I visited a remarkable union of cooperatives that is achieving food sovereignty through agroecology. The Tosepan Titataniske cooperatives had drawn on Indigenous Nahuatl traditions and used their remoteness to try to carve out not just an area free of genetically modified crops, but a territory free of megaprojects. It hadn’t come easy. When the environment ministry announced the large “Cloud Forest” ecotourism project for the area in the late 1990s, the community mobilized. They had already seen the negative impacts of such projects. Mines were contaminating rivers. Hydroelectric projects, taking advantage of the abundant rains in the mountainous area, were destroying the local environment. There were 98 land concessions for such projects in the area. Tosepan Titataniske, which means “together we shall overcome” in the local Nahuatl language, organized, taking advantage of a national law that allows communities to zone for different land uses. With a series of technical studies and community consultations that involved up to 5,000 people, they approved their “Ecological Land-Use Zoning for the Sierra Norte of Puebla.” The plan identified areas approved for conservation, restoration, sustainable use, and protection (including the main watersheds). Mining and most other megaprojects were defined as categorically incompatible with all four zones. Getting the plan enforced was another matter, as the companies pushed back. Tosepan created its own Territorial Defense Committee to monitor company activities and led a class action suit to have its zoning plan recognized and enforced. They won their case in March 2015, but enforcement is still a problem. Still, Tosepan leader Enrique Fernández told us that they had successfully stopped four hydroelectric projects and a Walmart through a mixture of legal action, lobbying, and direct action to stop the bulldozers and backhoes. Stopping Walmart and the national electric company got my attention. Was this another little David taking on a different set of Goliaths? Little wasn’t the word that came to mind as I learned more about Tosepan. The organization, which started in 1977, now has 410 cooperatives involving more than 30,000 families in 25 municipalities (similar to U.S. counties) across the remote region. Leonardo Durán Olguín, the young multilingual local who briefed our small group on the organization, said the goal of the group was yeknemilis in Nahuatl, buenvivir in Spanish, and of course we don’t really have a good phrase for such a lovely concept in English. Good living? No matter, they showed us what they meant. Cuetzalán is a collection of remote villages in the northeastern corner of the Mexican state of Puebla. Photo by Jacobo Zanella/Getty Images. Their schools, which were in session, were a good place to start. Tosepan runs its own autonomous school system recognized by the government under a program for remote communities. They get no funds from the government, just some books. It’s supported like many other cooperatives in the community, with donations and a lot of volunteer labor. Their teachers, however, are trained on the Montessori model as bilingual Spanish-Nahuatl instructors. Indeed, in one fourth-grade class the teacher went back and forth between the two languages seamlessly. The goal is to have all children functionally bilingual by sixth grade. She said that younger children come in with stronger Nahuatl (or Tutunaku, the other indigenous language in the region) than Spanish. They want children to be able to function in the larger Spanish-speaking society, assigning books and book reports in Spanish. (“In a country where our president does not read books,” one teacher told us, “we want children who read.” Amen, I thought in 2015, and I didn’t even know what was coming back home.) They keep older children from losing their local language by involving them in cultural projects, including their own weekly radio show in Nahuatl, called Vida Digna in Spanish. (Again, our English isn’t up to the elegance: Dignified Life?) It includes high-schoolers interviewing their grandmothers or older community leaders in their native language. These were impressive kids, particularly the girls, so poised and articulate as they toured us around the school, showed us their school newspaper, explained how they make biological fertilizers as part of their practical work curriculum. No wonder. Their regular school day involves only two and a half hours of academic instruction. The rest is spent on farmwork, physical education, and arts and local crafts, with an hour for recess and lunch. The food is donated by community members and prepared by a student-staffed cafeteria. Everybody’s involved in community projects. The eco-lodge we stayed in, made entirely with bamboo from a Tosepan project that makes furniture and building materials, is run by a youth cooperative. Other students staff the community store, selling eggs and other farm produce. It is just part of the culture, with all community members participating in tequio , or community labor. Economic projects center mainly on coffee, which grows on beautiful shaded hillsides that contain 150 different plant species. Their cooperative control of the process has boosted farmer income from coffee 200 percent. Cooperatives also have a successful organic bee/honey operation and the bamboo workshop producing furniture for the local market. We visited the large processing plant in town where they produce high-quality organic pepper for export to the Middle East and Europe. And of course they grow maize, usually inter-cropped with beans, squash, chiles, and other edible plants. Leonardo said the community is largely self-sufficient in basic foods. It was easy to romanticize Tosepan as being “off the grid,” but as Leonardo made clear, they know that with megaprojects threatening them, they need to engage with the larger national and international economy. They just need to do so strategically, not letting the market decide their collective futures. Certainly Monsanto was not going to decide what they grow or eat in Tosepan. Copyright © 2019 by Timothy A. Wise. This excerpt originally appeared in Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food, published by The New Press and edited and reprinted here with permission.

Leaders endorse agroecology as one of the cutting-edge innovations we need to help small-scale farmers adapt to climate change. "Agroecology is the only solution we have to address the multiple crises we are facing." (Photo: Public domain) Originally Published on Common Dreams, October 24, 2019 The Climate Action Summit at the UN last month was widely considered a disappointment, failing to garner the kinds of government actions needed to address the climate crisis. Sadly, the same can be said for actions on agriculture and climate change, despite a well-publicized commitment of $790 million to “to enhance resilience of over 300 million small-scale food producers in the face of mounting climate impacts.” That is not because the investment isn’t needed. It is, desperately. Small-scale farmers in developing countries are already bearing the brunt of climate change yet they have received little of the promised funding to help them adapt to drought, flooding, heat, and other climate changes. These new initiatives won’t bridge that gap. Just as government actions to date are proving far too weak to address the climate emergency, these agriculture programs support familiar measures that have thus far failed to help small-scale farmers. Some measures have left them even more vulnerable to climate change. We need a more decisive shift. Fortunately, government leaders took a major step in that direction gather in Rome next last week at for a different summit, the annual meetings of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS). They will be discussing approved an expert report on agroecology, an innovative and cost-effective way a more promising innovation to address rising hunger and malnutrition while helping farmers adapt to climate change. A host of recent UN reports calls for just this sort of break. “Agroecology is the only solution we have to address the multiple crises we are facing,” said Aisha Ali Aii Shatou of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa to the government representatives at the summit. When the solutions are part of the problem The new $790-million agriculture initiative is driven by recommendations from the Global Commission on Adaptation (CGA), which is co-chaired by Bill Gates, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva. Its report, “ Adapt Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Resilience,” has as one of its core initiatives enhancing the resilience of smallholder producers. Unfortunately, the Commission largely doubles down on the misguided effort to “modernize” agriculture in developing countries by encouraging farmers to adopt precisely the sorts of fossil-fuel-intensive practices that have made agriculture one of the greatest contributors to global greenhouse-gas emissions. As I saw in researching my book, Eating Tomorrow, crop diversity and soil fertility often decline as a result. In its recommendations, the commission includes agroecology only as an afterthought, warning that we need to improve “the evidence-base for the effectiveness of adopting different agroecological approaches” – as if we don’t know enough yet to act. They clearly hadn’t read the new expert report on agroecology and other innovations for sustainable food systems , released July 3 by the CFS’s High Level Panel of Experts. The expert report, two years in the making, is clear on the urgent need for change. “Food systems are at a crossroads. Profound transformation is needed,” the summary begins. It goes on to present a wide range of evidence that such methods have been shown to simultaneously increase soil fertility, diet diversity, and food security for small-scale farmers. Agroecology promotes just the kinds of soil-building practices that “agricultural modernization” often undermines. Multiple food crops are grown in the same field. Compost and manure, not fossil-fuel-based fertilizer, are used to fertilize fields. Biological pest control decreases pesticide use. Researchers work with farmers to improve the productivity of their seeds rather than replacing them with commercial seeds farmers need to buy every year and douse with fertilizer to make them grow. As the expert report documents, soil fertility increases over time, and so do food security and climate resilience. Agroecology: a proven response to the failing policies of the present The growing global interest in agroecology comes in response to the widespread failures of input-intensive programs like the Gates-inspired Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Fed by heavy doses of government subsidies for commercial seeds and synthetic fertilizers, AGRA has promoted monocultures of a few staple crops, decreased crop and diet diversity, undermined soil fertility, and produced disappointing gains in productivity and farmer incomes. Global Hunger Index scores remained in the “serious” to “alarming” category for 12 of the 13 AGRA countries. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its influential report on “ Climate Change and Land, ” echoed the urgent need for change and the direction that change should take: “[I]ncreasing the resilience of the food system through agroecology and diversification is an effective way to achieve climate change adaptation….” Fortunately, in Rome government leaders were forward-looking. Many recognized that business as usual, in the face of climate change, is not an option. They moved beyond the failed policies of the present, endorsing agroecology as the kind of innovation farmers need to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. As African farmer Aisha Ali Aii Shatou told the summit, “Agroecology allows small-scale producers a dignified life, producing affordable, healthy food in healthy conditions. It eliminates dependence on costly inputs and adopts practices which regenerate seeds and soils while mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change.” The CFS next year will take up the challenge of translating this visionary report into practical policies. *Tim attended the UN’s Committee on World Food Security summit in Rome October 14-18 as a civil society delegate.

Originally Published on Common Dreams , October 19, 2019 How often I hear that in “polarized” America rural voters will reject a green agenda out of hand. For them, green means liberal, tree-hugging snobs, unconcerned about the struggles of real working people. But last week that frame busted for me when I had a chance to speak with Chloe Maxmin, a 27 year-old Maine legislator. Never heard of Chloe Maxmin? Well, keep reading, and maybe you’ll agree with me that the story she and colleagues are writing bring many surprises and lessons worth spreading. Maxmin grew up on her parents’ farm in Nobleboro, a Maine town of about 1,600. Describing herself as an activist since age 12, in 2015 she earned a degree at Harvard while making time to co-found Divest Harvard, a campaign to push the university’s divestment from fossil fuels. The battle to make Harvard divest is still unresolved, but Maxmin’s run for a seat in Maine’s House of Representatives in 2018 had a decisive outcome. First, she won the Democratic primary for District 88 with almost 80 percent of the vote. Then, she took on Republican Michael Lemelin, a local businessman and retired pilot. Though her district had never chosen a Democrat, she received 52.5 percent of the vote. Given her youth, it’s striking that Maxmin now represents a district with one of the oldest populations of any district in the country. Three quarters of her district lies in Lincoln County, where roughly 28 percent of residents are older than 65—a share exceeding the national average by 75 percent. And how did she win against all odds? First, Maxmin was helped by Maine’s 1996 “ Clean Elections ” law entitling candidates for the state legislature to receive public financing—if they first collect from voters in their district a certain number of small contributions. For a seat in Maine’s House, it’s sixty $5.00 contributions. They also agree not to raise or spend any private money. Maine’s “Clean Elections” law levels the campaign-playing field, making running for office accessible to anyone regardless of income or background. It helps to hold candidates accountable to the voters, not to their funders. While 14 states offer some kind public campaign financing for some offices, only two other states offer full public funding for state legislative offices ( Connecticut and Arizona ), and in Arizona the program has been seriously undermined. While Clean Elections helped to make Maxmin’s campaign possible, her success reflects core messages and a campaigning approach that resonate with voters. “Whenever people ask me how we won, and how we did it, my answer, quite frankly, is just to listen to people, pay attention.” She stressed that “once you get through differing opinions on policy issues, below that… we all share an incredibly deep frustration with our government.” She sees the state level as offering “opportunity to really rebuild our humanity and rebuild our faith in each other and politics.” One encounter with a gentleman living in trailer home at the end of a narrow dirt road seemed to capture her point. He was surprised “to see me,” as “I was the first political candidate to come to his door and listen.” At the end of their talk, he told Maxmin, “You’re the first person to listen to me. Everyone judges what my house looks like. They don’t bother to knock. I’m grateful that you came. I’m going to vote for you. Thank you.” In all, her campaign team knocked on at least 10,000 doors…and listened. Once in office, Maxmin quickly moved on her commitment to helping her district by passing Green New Deal legislation. “From the beginning, I was very clear in our messaging that my [Green New Deal] bill was by and for Maine, by and for my community, that was specific and targeted legislation to lift up the voices of rural and working Maine. I called it the Green New Deal so everyone would pay attention to it and a different way of talking about climate change. Most people got it and also understood that it was different from what's going on in D.C.” Fortunately, five colleagues—including two Republicans—in the state’s House and Senate shared Chloe’s values enough to introduce their own complementary legislation . “We had to make up for eight years,” of Republican governor, and climate-change denier, Paul LePage who had blocked every climate initiative whatsoever. Despite finding allies, it wasn’t always easy. When, after only six months in office, Maxmin stood at the chamber podium to introduce her Green New Deal for Maine Act, Republican colleagues immediately interrupted her, not once but four times in quick succession. Maxmin remained undeterred, and ultimately her Green New Deal bill passed by a hefty margin: 84 to 55. In all, seven green bills passed between February and June, including a state “renewable energy portfolio standard” and a goal of 80 percent renewable energy by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050. Maine also set the goal of reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. With this success, Maine became the third state after California and New Mexico to pass a Green New Deal and a carbon-reduction goal. Maxmin is especially proud that her Green New Deal was endorsed by a state AFL-CIO affiliate , the first such bill at the state-level to receive labor’s support. Why? Her bill specifically mandates that a share—beginning with 10 percent and rising to 25 percent by 2027—of jobs in major solar installations have to be filled by those in apprentice programs registered with the Department of Labor. Though leadership clearly focuses on the “big questions,” Maxmin is also finding time to attend to her district’s immediate needs including passing bills , for example, to improve transportation for seniors, as well as hosting monthly coffees at the local diner to talk with constituents about their concerns. Maxmin’s strong positions on climate and economic justice impress me, but what also makes her a great leader for our time is her commitment to democracy itself. “Everything in our lives depends on our political system, and we need to figure out different ways of running campaigns, figure out how to actually represent the people—with respect and dignity for everybody,” she told the Times Record . Talking with Maxmin it was clear to me that her passion for the environment and democracy were not rooted in abstract principle but in deep connection to her home. “I love Maine. I love my town and I want to protect it,” she told us more than once. So, if this piece reads like an “Ode to Chloe Maxmin,” I cop to it. In my view, Chloe Maxmin and her bold colleagues offer the tonic we most need now. It is called “hope”—not blind optimism but hope grounded in courageous action. Thank you, Maine. It sure tastes good.

Originally Published on Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa More than a decade after a renewed push for an African Green Revolution began in earnest, and after a decade of program implementation by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), there is an urgent need to examine whether or not there is evidence of a green revolution underway. AGRA’s stated goals are to double yields and incomes for 30 million farming households by 2020. Despite millions of dollars spent by AGRA since 2006, few comprehensive evaluations of AGRA have been made available. An additional USD 30 billion was recently pledged at the African Green Revolution Forum to continue AGRA’s work and help launch the organization’s new strategic vision, without a clear understanding of how effective AGRA has been in increasing agricultural productivity and adoption of green revolution technologies and reducing poverty and malnutrition in the countries over the past decade. Lessons learned from the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, which succeeded primarily in Asia and Latin America, should serve as an important reminder of both the unintended consequences of Green Revolution technologies and processes and the large role that governments played where success was achieved. With that in mind, this assessment focuses on the extent to which there is evidence of a green revolution in agriculture in AGRA’s target countries, in terms of both increased productivity of staple food crops and technology adoption. This is achieved by looking broadly across all 13 of AGRA’s initial focus countries using national-level data, in conjunction with in-depth case studies of three AGRA countries using nationally representative household survey data and peer-reviewed research. Overall, we find little evidence that AGRA is achieving the productivity and income gains necessary to meet its targets. Where there is evidence of progress, we find it primarily in countries that support technology adoption through government-sponsored agricultural input subsidy programs (FISPs), rather than countries with large AGRA investments and emphasis. Download the six page summary report here. Download the six page summary report in French here .

Tech 'solutions' to agricultural challenges can actually perpetuate the industrialized food system. Photo by David Parry / PA Wire. Originally Published on Earth Island Journal, October 10, 2019. The words “Food Out of Thin Air” were projected on a massive screen at the front of a grand hotel ballroom. The man at the podium, Pasi Vainikka, was pitching a new protein powder called Solein made with hydrogen as the energy source and CO2 as the carbon source. (Yes, food from air). Vainikka was speaking to a packed audience of investors and entrepreneurs at a food tech conference earlier this year in the center of the start-up universe — San Francisco. He was one of dozens that day promising investors they could feed the world, address the environmental impacts of processed foods, and make a huge return on investment all at the same time. Sitting in the audience, I was struck by how many pitches and panels sounded like they had been copied from a Sunrise Movement activist’s notebook: “We need to turn our planet carbon neutral by mid-century!” declared one entrepreneur. “We have climate change! We need to feed 10 billion people! We need to make the most sustainable food ingredients,” proclaimed another. During a break, I chatted with a rep from a firm working on cellular agriculture whose motto is “Food without Fields.” He explained, it’s about “decoupling food from the ecosystem.” The presumption behind many of these pronouncements is that the best way to protect ecosystems is to take farming out of them — and put food production in the lab. That’s a big presumption, and its implication is that there’s no cost-effective and ecologically sound way to keep the farm in the field. But evidence is showing that agriculture — when aligned with ecological principles — is key to solving our environmental crises, not exacerbating them. The idea that this decoupling will necessarily deliver eco-benefits ignores growing concerns about some of these new food technologies and discounts the proven benefits of sustainable practices. What we know, based on the peer-reviewed literature and on-the-ground evidence, is that on-farm practices can provide a multitude of positives for ecosystems: from protecting pollinator populations to promoting soil health, from carbon sequestration to water filtration. While agriculture is one of the most significant drivers of land loss, deforestation, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, it doesn’t have to be. It’s the industrial model of production that pushes extractive farming — one reliant on fossil fuels, petrochemicals, monocultures — that’s driving environmental degradation. Unfortunately, many of the tech “solutions” being hawked today, including many in that San Francisco ballroom, do little to get us away from such a model. For all its hype, for instance, the Impossible Burger — the non-meat burger that “bleeds” like the real thing — is a patty made with a genetically engineered protein (never tested for human consumption, mind you) and, since this year, produced with genetically engineered soybeans sprayed with an arsenal of herbicides and other chemicals. While Impossible Foods, the company behind the burger, likes to tout its water and energy savings compared with feedlot beef burgers, its product actually doesn’t move us away from industrialized food. Indeed, it creates a new market for commodities like GE soy, which is key part of our industrial food system. There are other big concerns about the rush to embrace these new technologies. Investors assume consumers will happily flock to them — a sort of food-from-the-lab glorification that gaslights the long histories of food cultures as integral, indivisible elements of spiritual and religious traditions around the world. We need to consider, too, the vast amount of time and resources diverted to technologies that entrench us further in a fossil-fuel dependent food chain versus a liberated, regenerative one. I’ll leave it to actor Jeff Goldblum, and his Jurassic Park character Ian Malcolm, to have the last word: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Originally Published on Common Dreams, October 3, 2019 Our government’s and corporate media’s failure to capture the true extent of unemployment creates a distorted narrative about work that feeds bewilderment and self-recrimination. Though a recent poll suggests the majority of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s “overall performance,” they support his “handling of the economy” more than other issues surveyed. "The prosperity cycle we have entered into is continuing, it is strong,” White House National Economic Council Director Lawrence Kudlow celebrated last April. “This is the new Trump economy,” and “I'll tell you it's working.” Whoo-hoo! But wait. Do the numbers justify celebration? To understand our world we need numbers, for sure, and we also need to keep in mind the old refrain “numbers can lie”—even accurate ones. So let’s dig into those most pundits rely on to judge our economy’s health. First, let’s look at what gets measured. The Cost of Basics Cost-of-living calculators report how much money we need to cover such basics as housing, groceries, taxes, and health in various US localities. The Economic Policy Institute’s budget calculator , for example, tells us that in Boston two adults and two kids need $113,558 just to cover these basics. Seems like a lot of money. Many of us can recall a time when $100,000 in family income was well above middle class. But costs have been rising across the country. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the cost of living from July 2017 to July 2018 was up from 1.7 percent to 2.9 percent. A broader measure, the inflation rate, for 2017 was 2.1 percent. So if we aren’t making more, we’re losing ground. Career Builders reported in 2017 that seventy-eight percent of US workers are living pay check to pay check. It found that inflation-adjusted (“real”) hourly earnings increased 1.2 percent in the year ending in April 2019, but over this period the inflation rate was even higher: 2.0 percent gobbled up the gain. These two indices—cost-of-living and inflation—are related, but not identical. The Cost of Living Index tracks what it takes to maintain a certain standard of living; whereas, inflation refers a general increase—measured by the Consumer Price Index —in prices of goods and services. By either measure, most of us are not doing so well. In 2017 the bulk of gains in our real income came from working longer hours, not wage increases, according to the US Census Bureau . Note, too, that longer working hours for many of us means bigger expenses for commuting, childcare, or care for other dependents. Signs of Pain, Not Gain Six in ten Americans don’t have enough savings for a $1,000 emergency, reports Bankrate’s January 2019 Financial Security Index survey . Four in ten adults could not afford a $400 emergency expense, found the Federal Reserve Board‘s Economic Well-Being report in May 2018. So, while many toast progress, workers actually lost ground. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported in September 2019 that the real average hourly earnings were up 1.5 percent from August 2018 to August 2019. Now this sounds fine, but it is only half of the story. The BLS also reported in September 2019 that inflation for the same period was 1.7 percent. That’s lost ground despite the wage increase. PayScale, tracking total cash compensation for full-time, private industry employees and education professionals, noted a worse decline of 1.8 percent during 2018, once inflation is factored in. And looking back further? Since 2006, inflation-adjusted pay is down 9.8 percent. Other measures don’t look very good, either. In 2017 country-wide, one in four jobs is in a low-wage occupation and in some states it’s even worse. In six states—Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and West Virginia—more than one in three jobs is in a low-wage occupation. And the share of jobs that are low-wage—that is, cannot keep a family of four above the poverty line—has remained relatively stagnant since 2012. The federal minimum wage has lost 31 percent of its value over the last 50 years. The relentless attacks on labor unions have dramatically reduced the numbers of workers protected by a union contract. Shamefully, the policy decisions coming out of Washington from both political parties have resulted in crushing any hopes of shared economic growth. How Our Government Underreports Unemployment Among the six Bureau of Labor Statistics, the standard is called U-3 unemployment rate. It counts only those without a job who were actively searching for a job in the four weeks prior to the survey. What it fails to include are: Discouraged job seekers: Americans who have searched for work in the last 12 months but not looking in the past four weeks. Part-time workers: Those of us who want full-time work or who are underemployed for “economic reasons“ such as the loss of a job through a company’s downsizing, relocating or closing down. Also included here are those who held part-time jobs for non-economic reasons such the demands of childcare or family or personal obligations and in school or retired. A more accurate measure is the U-6 rate, which includes those in the first two categories and more. Typically, this much more realistic—mostly ignored—rate is at least double the standard U-3 rate. As evidence of a “booming” economy, for example, in January 2019 , the BLS announced 3.6 percent as its U-3 unemployment rate for December 2018. However, the U-6 rate was 7.8 percent. In fact, for all of 2018 , the average U-3 unemployment rate was 3.9 percent. What Americans didn’t learn is that the U-6 rate was 7.8 percent. But the broader U-6 measure hides real pain. Shadow Government Statistics reported in 1994, that workers moving from U-3 into U-6 status and were “discouraged” for more than a year were dropped altogether from unemployment numbers. Including these folks would triple the U-6 rate, but the public never knows. The Human Cost Our government’s and corporate media’s failure to capture the true extent of unemployment creates a distorted narrative about work that feeds bewilderment and self-recrimination. If the economy is “booming,” increasing job numbers and reducing unemployment, then “Why am I struggling so hard? Is it my fault?” The impact of the false picture could contribute to our worsening rates of depression. Bottom line: Essential to democracy are citizens who know the score. Only accurate and complete economic representations of the state of our nation can enable an informed electorate to pursue policies benefiting all.

Climate change comes for farmers — from Mozambique to Iowa Originally Published on Medium , September 20, 2019 Photo: Brian Strombeck It felt ominous when I was in Iowa in March that both Iowa and Mozambique were underwater from cyclone-induced flooding widely attributed to climate change. I’d studied and written about both places in my recent book . These farming communities are as distant from one another – geographically and developmentally – as they could be, yet there they were in the same metaphorical lifeboat trying to save their families and farms from the floods. I saw the devastation in central Mozambique in June – houses still missing their roofs, schools barely functioning, and farmers without seeds for the coming rainy season. The March cyclone wiped out crops that were nearly ready for harvest, leaving communities dependent for the present on food aid and without seeds for this year’s planting. Parts of Iowa were underwater when I was there in March, and today Iowa and much of the Midwest is still suffering periodic flooding from the wettest year on record. Many farmers couldn’t plant because the ground was too wet, or they got their crops in late, reducing yields. There were only three reported deaths from the flooding; Iowa had the lifeboats to get people out of danger. But they are not out of the destructive path of climate change, and I sensed a new awareness of that danger, suddenly clear and present. With farmers on opposite sides of the globe suffering the same types of severe storms provoked by a changing climate, I imagined them all in the same lifeboat. They would have a lot to learn from one another. The Mozambicans might tell their Iowan boat-mates that U.S. farmers, with their greenhouse-gas-emitting industrial-scale farms, bore at least some of the responsibility for the rising waves of climate catastrophe. But those African peasants might also share their secret to surviving climate change, one that could help reverse Iowa’s own self-destructive agricultural path. Listen closely, Iowa, can you hear it? Diversidade, whisper the Mozambicans. Diversity. It may just be the key to climate resilience, from Africa to Iowa. A tale of two cyclones The U.S. and African storms were both described as “devastating,” and they were. But devastation looks much, much worse in a place as poor as Mozambique, on the east coast of Southern Africa. And they don’t have many lifeboats.... (... read the full article on Medium ...)