A new study shows that US families consume cancer-linked glyphosate in their food. The good news: going organic rapidly reduces levels Researchers found glyphosate in every participant, including children as young as four.’ Photograph: Alamy Originally Published on The Guardian , August 11, 2020 Never before have we sprayed so much of a chemical on our food, on our yards, on our children’s playgrounds. So it’s no surprise that Roundup – the world’s most widely used weedkiller – shows up in our bodies. What is perhaps surprising is how easy it is to get it out. A new peer-reviewed study , co-authored by one of us, studied pesticide levels in four American families for six days on a non-organic diet and six days on a completely organic diet. Switching to an organic diet decreased levels of Roundup’s toxic main ingredient, glyphosate, by 70% in just six days. “If my kids have this much of a change in their numbers, what would other families have?” asked Scott Hersrud of Minneapolis, Minnesota, a father of three who participated in the study. The answer to that question is increasingly clear: a big one. This study is part of a comprehensive scientific analysis showing that switching to an organic diet r apidly and dramatically reduces exposure to pesticides. That’s good news, but it raises a grave question: why do we have to be supermarket detectives, searching for organic labels to ensure we’re not eating food grown with glyphosate or hundreds of other toxic pesticides? Glyphosate was flagged as a potential carcinogen as far back as 1983 by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), yet use of the chemical has grown exponentially since, with the chemical giant Monsanto – purchased by Bayer in 2018 – dominating the market. Numerous reports have covered the internal company documents showing how Monsanto’s influence over the EPA succeeded in suppressing health concerns. In fact, rather than restricting the use of glyphosate, the EPA has raised the legal threshold for residues on some foods up to 300-fold above levels deemed safe in the 1990s. And unlike with other commonly used pesticides, the government has turned a blind eye for decades when it comes to monitoring glyphosate – failing to test for it on food and in our bodies. The agency’s slipshod regulation has led to a dramatic increase in exposure. Research shows that the percentage of the US population with detectable levels of glyphosate in their bodies increased from 12% in the mid-1970s to 70% by 2014. The new study paints an even more concerning picture. Researchers found glyphosate in every participant, including children as young as four. “I would love to get those pesticides out of my body and my family’s bodies,” said Andreina Febres of Oakland, California, a participant and mother of two. Parents have sound reasons to be concerned about their children’s exposure to glyphosate and other pesticides. While food residues often fall within levels that regulators consider safe, even government scientists have made it clear that US regulations have not kept pace with the latest science . For one, they ignore the compounding effects of our daily exposures to a toxic soup of pesticides and other industrial chemicals. Nor do they reflect that we can have higher risks at different times in our lives and in different conditions: a developing fetus, for instance, is particularly vulnerable to toxic exposures, as are children and the immunocompromised. Instead, US regulators set one “safe” level for all of us. New research also shows that chemicals called “endocrine disruptors” can increase risk of cancers, learning disabilities, birth defects, obesity, diabetes and reproductive disorders, even at incredibly small levels. (Think the equivalent of one drop in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.) Research has linked glyphosate to high rates of kidney disease in farming communities and to shortened pregnancy in a cohort of women in the midwest. Animal studies and bioassays link it to endocrine disruption , DNA damage , decreased sperm function , disruption of the gut microbiome and fatty liver disease . The pesticide industry’s success in keeping a chemical with known toxicity on the market is emblematic of a fundamental system failure. The US allows more than 70 pesticides banned in the European Union. And in just the last few years, the EPA has approved more than 100 new pesticide products containing ingredients deemed to be highly hazardous. Yet last year, it looked like glyphosate was going to be a success story of another kind – the kind where science wins. In the wake of the World Health Organization determination that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen , thousands of farmers, pesticide applicators and home gardeners filed lawsuits linking their cancer to Roundup. The first three cases were settled in favor of the plaintiffs, saddling Bayer with $2bn in damages (later reduced by judges). But this summer, while Bayer agreed to pay $10bn to settle an additional 95,000 cases out of court, the company again evaded responsibility: under the terms of the settlement, Roundup will continue to be sold for use on yards, school grounds, public parks and farms without any safety warning. Pesticide companies’ ability to keep profiting from products that poison us is particularly egregious given that we have a solution. Organic works. And not just for our health – research shows that a shift away from pesticide-intensive agriculture leads to significant improvements for biodiversity and other environmental benchmarks while also yielding enough to ensure a well-fed planet. We can look to the European Union for some hope. This summer the EU announced plans to halve use of pesticides by 2030 and transition at least 25% of agriculture to organic. But in the US, despite ever-growing demand for organic food, the government continues to favor the profits of the pesticide industry over our health, spending billions of our taxpayer dollars to prop up pesticide-intensive farming while organic programs and research are woefully underfunded. As this study shows, the end result is toxic chemicals in our bodies that don’t need to be there. A growing number of people are responding by buying organic, but what about the many who don’t have access to organic or can’t afford it? As long as we treat organic food as if it’s a shopping preference instead of a public good, we will miss the opportunity to fight for a desperately needed shift in how we farm – one that would ensure that no one is exposed to toxic pesticides from the food they eat. Kendra Klein , PhD, is senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth-US, a national organization working to create a more just and healthy world. Anna Lappé is a national best-selling author and co-director of Real Food Media. Together, they have collaborated on Organic for All

Are humans truly destructive at our core, or is there another story to be told? By Anna Lappé The history of Easter Island has long been used to reinforce the notion that humans have an inexorable propensity for environmental devastation. Photo by Lee Coursey Originally Published on Earth Island Journal , Summer 2020 By Day 81 of shelter-in-place, I’ve had a lot of time to ponder human nature: I’ve read about corporate executives forcing meatpacking workers to toil shoulder-to-shoulder without any protections from Covid-19 and also about emergency room workers rushing into hospital rooms to save dying patients. I’ve heard about swindlers hawking defective personal protective equipment and chefs working seven days a week to transform restaurants into emergency feeding centers. I’ve seen my own daughters, ages 8 and 10, tease each other relentlessly and comfort each other in ways I never could. As this article goes to press, I, along with millions of others, have watched in horror as a police officer was captured on video extinguishing the life of George Floyd and have seen communities all across the country rise up to demand justice and fundamental change. A global pandemic and public reckoning of systemic racism serve as potent reminders that we’re all we’ve got on this tiny blue orb in the universe. And, so, amidst it all, I’ve wondered what do we really know about the nature of our nature? Are the violent cop and the illegal land grabber the true reflection of human nature, and the selfless humanitarian and rainforest protector the aberration? Or is it the other way around? I was thinking about all of this when I stumbled on the latest book by the Dutch historian and journalist Rutger Bregman. (He’s the guy who rumpled the feathers of Davos elite last year by daring to suggest they should all be taxed a hell of a lot more). Called Humankind , Bregman’s book explores these thorny questions of human nature. As he describes in a May Guardian excerpt that went viral, Bregman knew when he started his book that he’d need to tackle one of the tentpole stories of the humans-are-ruthless narrative: Lord of the Flies . The 1954 novel by Nobel Prize–winning author William Golding tells the story of British schoolboys stranded on a deserted island. Whether you’ve read the book or not (I vaguely remember its details from high school English class), you know what happened next: It got ugly. By the time the boys are rescued, three of them are dead — and the narrator laments “the darkness of man’s heart.” But it’s a novel, of course, a made-up story. What would happen if a band of boys were really stranded on an island, all on their own? Would they descend into the chaos of Lord of the Flies? Those questions led Bregman on a quest to discover whether there was such a story out there, a real one. Ultimately, with some serious sleuthing — and good luck — Bregman discovered the tale of six boys marooned on an island in the South Pacific in the 1960s and discovered after 15 months by an Australian sea captain. What the captain found wasn’t the dark violence of Golding’s novel, but love and solidarity, boys who survived alone through shared work, song, and prayer for all those many months. On his Twitter feed, Bregman writes how he has been moved by the popularity of his Guardian excerpt: “Wow. Really overwhelmed with the response to my story about the real ‘Lord of the Flies’. So so happy that this extraordinary tale is finally - after 50 years! - becoming famous.” It makes sense to me why people are drawn to this story now: We are hungry to hear about the good in us at a time when there is so much darkness. We’re hungry for a story of self that speaks to our deeper kindness. We’ve certainly had enough of Lord of the Flies. At this moment of global pandemic, nested in the other global crisis of our time, climate chaos, there’s another narrative I’ve been thinking about — another one that needs a rewrite. If Lord of the Flies is the dominant tale of humans’ true relationship to each other, the sorry story of Easter Island is the tale we’re told about our true relationship with nature. And it’s not pretty. For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard the history of Easter Island used to reinforce the notion that humans have an inexorable propensity for environmental devastation, a notion that makes the potential for us to solve climate change — or, frankly, any environmental crisis — seem that much more daunting. We can’t help it, we’re taught to believe, it’s just what humans do . The dominant theory of Easter Island — that mysterious speck in the southeastern Pacific Ocean dotted with more than 1,000 iconic tributes to deities — is that the native population decimated the island’s natural resources, driven by a need for food but also by a myopic, and ultimately deadly, obsession. In Collapse , anthropologist Jared Diamond writes, “Eventually Easter’s growing population was cutting the forest more rapidly than the forest was regenerating. The people used land for gardens and wood for fuel, canoes, and houses — and of course, for lugging statues.” Diamond was drawing on the archeological work of Paul Bahn and John Flenley who wrote Easter Island, Earth Island (just in case the metaphor wasn’t clear already). Bahn and Flenley write: “The person who felled the last tree could see that it was the last tree. But he (or she) still felled it. This is what is so worrying. Humankind’s covetousness is boundless. Its selfishness appears to be genetically inborn.” Whoa. Pretty dark stuff. This story — that humans are “genetically inborn” with a disregard for the environment around us — is certainly the prevailing message. But what if something else happened on that island so many years ago? Something that cracks one of the most powerful metaphors about human nature and ecological harmony. Indeed, a few years ago I stumbled on just such a history. Anthropologist Terry Hunt and archeologist Carl Lipo have a different theory about the island, its inhabitants, and those statues. In their book, The Statues that Walked , Hunt and Lipo argue that the archeological record reveals how the island’s palm cover was decimated not by “covetous natives,” but by an invasive rat. And timber wasn’t harvested to roll gargantuan statues along logs. Instead, the statues were moved upright, rocked on sturdy vines. They “walked.” What’s more, Easter Island’s barren, rock-strewn landscape isn’t a reflection of the Tragedy of the Commons. Rather, the rocks are remnants of a sophisticated food cultivation practice called “lithic mulching,” which uses carefully placed stones to prevent soil erosion and create micro-climates. Hunt and Lipo count 2,553 of these formations across the island. “These findings,” Hunt and Lipo write, “suggest that rather than a case of abject failure, [Easter Island] is an unlikely story of success.” The prevailing story — with its racist undertones of a barbaric Indigenous population driving itself to collapse — comes undone. (There’s a side note here: The native folklore on the island has long told tales of “chiefs and priests imbued with a supernatural power who simply ordered the statues to walk,” tales that had been widely dismissed as simply fantastical folklore. Now, the idea of teetering statues rocking along vines — walking — is backed up by the archeological record.) Human nature is messy, for sure, but for too long the dominant story of it in the Western canon of literature, archeology, and more has been written by one branch of the human family, codified in novels like Lord of the Flies and in histories like that of Easter Island . It’s a story that tells us we are innately ruthless, savage to each other and the planet. It’s a story many of us are still raised on. More than half a century after it was published, Lord of the Flies still finds itself in the ranks of the best young adult books of all time — a recent UK poll placed it third among books for students. From textbooks to random websites, we can find the dominant story of Easter Island still reinforcing this notion that the island is a microcosm of a planetary story of humans at odds with nature, unable to contain our destructiveness. I, for one, am ready for a new story. As I continue to shelter-in-place, and my Twitter scroll fills with more terrifying news of both the pandemic and the weather shocks of the climate crisis, I take solace in this other story of ourselves, one that need not ignore our darkest traits, but that lifts up the intrinsic kindness and environmental stewardship of the human family — a family to which we all belong. This essay has been updated.

People go hungry not from lack of food but from lack of political power. Photo from the OECD Originally Published in the Boston Globe , July 20, 2020 Today’s multiplying threats are truly scary — a deadly pandemic with vast economic losses, police murders reflecting endemic racism, a president trashing constitutional protections, and . . . oh yes, a pending climate catastrophe. So fear is inevitable, and, of course, it can ignite action that saves lives. But fear can also do the opposite. Fifty years ago, our world was also gripped by fear. Paul Ehrlich’s book “ The Population Bomb ” predicted “mass starvation” on a “dying planet.” The ensuing scarcity scare triggered a fixation on ever-greater production of food. Along the way, agribusinesses have warned that only their seeds and agricultural chemicals could save us. “Worrying about starving future generations won’t feed them. Food biotechnology will,” declared a 1998 Monsanto ad. As our fear-driven vision narrowed, we continued to perceive lack — even when our more-than-ample food supply has kept well ahead of population growth. We remain blind to how our food system, answering first to the demands of the wealthiest, generates vast waste — as the 83 percent of agricultural land used for livestock worldwide provides just 18 percent of our calories. Plus, there’s literal waste: A third of food produced never reaches our mouths. And has fear of scarcity ended hunger? Globally, almost 2,900 calories a day are produced for each of us. Yet, a quarter of humanity suffers from food insecurity, and a fifth of the world’s children are stunted, bringing life-long harms. Simultaneously, the fixation on production has brought the massive degradation of soil, water, biodiversity, and the climate — all needed to ensure healthy food for future generations. How could this happen? Why are we together creating a world that none of us as individuals would ever choose? Here is my theory: Fear has blocked us from taking the proverbial deep breath, then probing: Why are we here? As creatures of the mind, we see the world through frames of meaning that determine what we can see and what we cannot. With a frame fixed on production, we’ve not seen how our global, corporate-driven food system has turned our food supply into a health hazard. Today, noncommunicable diseases account for almost 70 percent of deaths — and diet is implicated in most of them. But we are not doomed. We humans are also learning creatures. Once aware of this vulnerability of our species, we can intentionally widen our lens. How? By asking why, then why again. It soon becomes clear that, as was true a half century ago, today people go hungry not from lack of food but from lack of power — the power to access food and the land to grow it. That lack of power arises from our brutal, extractive capitalism that celebrates the market as “free” when it is in fact driven by one rule: Do what brings highest return to existing wealth. Little wonder that the United States leads the world in daily calorie supply per person — almost 3,700 — and yet 40 million Americans worry about getting enough to eat. Or that economic inequality has become more extreme in America than in over 100 countries . Again, why? Why have we allowed ourselves to remain in this deadly trap? Part of the answer is that such profoundly skewed economic power corrupts political life. With a wider lens, we can see that hunger is not caused by scarcity of food but scarcity of democracy. In this process, fear is also used deliberately by those who benefit from economic injustice. It diverts the eyes of those harmed. Low-income white people, for example, don’t see the common ground they share with people of color who suffer even greater harm. Here is the good news. Fear can also provoke curiosity, pushing us to explore, and that requires courage. Getting curious about why our society has gone so far off track might lead us to examine fear of another kind of scarcity — fear that we citizens lack what it takes to create a democracy that answers to us instead of private wealth. We have been duly warned about what can happen if “we the people” lose confidence — and no one said this more starkly than Franklin Roosevelt. In 1938, he told Congress : “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.” Note these four words: “if the people tolerate.” Roosevelt reminds us that there is nothing inevitable here. If fear of our own powerlessness is blocking us, we can prove ourselves wrong. We can choose to no longer tolerate the ongoing assault on democracy. We can discover that fear is not a stop sign. It can be a source of energy that we can use as we choose. (When fear sends my heart pounding, I reframe it as “inner applause” cheering me on . . . and sometimes it works!) This is a lot easier when we team up — just as millions of courageous Americans are discovering, as today they step out together to demand deep, systemic reforms. With democracy itself — necessary to tackle all of today’s threats — at stake, many are saying no to 40 years of denigrating the role of government and instead are demanding it become a tool to “promote the general welfare,” as our Constitution’s preamble defines the very purpose of our nation. Perhaps for the first time in our history, Americans motivated by a range of passions — from race to climate to food — are joining in a “movement of movements” for democracy itself. Its goal? Reforms ranging from protection of voting rights to removing the corrupting influence of money in politics. A sign of this awakening is the Democracy Initiative, which was founded in 2013 and now has 72 member organizations representing 45 million Americans. On board is Food and Water Watch , challenging our increasingly monopolized food system that threatens the health of our land and its people. In this moment of multiple threats, our future depends on everyday Americans moving from fear to empowerment, ensuring what FDR called “the liberty of democracy.” The Future of Food was produced by Globe Opinion. The advertiser had no role in the editorial content.

Originally Published on Earth Island Journal , March 8, 2020 When my father, Marc Lappé, died in 2005 at the age of 62 from glioblastoma, he left behind a wife, five children, two stepchildren, and an unfinished manuscript. In the wake of his death, while struggling to make sense of a world without him, I holed up in a writers’ retreat on the rocky coastline of Provincetown, Massachusetts to see if I could transform his rough ideas into something presentable — and publish what would have been his 15th book. The Pacific Declaration was fundamentally a call to apply the precautionary principle to genetic engineering. (Pictured: CRISPR gene-edited mushrooms). Photo by Penn State / Flickr. I never succeeded. But the central idea of his book has stayed with me all these years. Drafted at the dawn of the age of genetic engineering — long before the development of CRISPR technologies and new ways to alter life as we know it — the book’s message was simple: We’ve developed frameworks within and across nation states for protecting environmental integrity for future generations (think the US Endangered Species Act). Now, as we attempt to alter the genetic makeup of living beings, we need new strategies and frameworks for protecting the planet’s genetic integrity for future generations. He was writing as a scientist, an ethicist — and a parent. I have been reflecting on his insight from so many years ago on the 20th anniversary of “The Pacific Declaration,” a statement of the ethical principles for this era of genetic engineering that my father and two dozen scientists, ethicists, and authors crafted on another rocky coastline in Bolinas, California and published in October 1999. The Declaration states: “In recognition of the fundamental importance of our planet’s natural genetic heritage and diversity, and in acknowledgment of the power of genetic engineering to transform this heritage, [we] believe that the proponents and practitioners of genetic technologies must adhere to the principles of prudence, transparency, and accountability.” The document was fundamentally a call to apply the precautionary principle to our collective approach to genetic engineering. The authors noted that the burden of proof must be on those promoting genetic engineering to show that these technologies “contribute to the general welfare of consumers, farmers, and society.” And that they do so, importantly, “without compromising the viability of traditional agricultural practices, including organic farming.” The Declaration was also a call to bring democratic deliberation to decisions about regulation and research priorities: “In democratic societies, any decision to deploy powerful new technologies must be made with full public participation and accountability,” the Declaration states. And it was a demand for “food sovereignty,” the concept developed in the 1990s by the global peasant movement, La Via Campesina, that calls for farmer and community power over what food is grown, where, and how. The month after my father and others gathered to write this Declaration, I found myself getting tear gassed in the streets of Seattle. At the time, I was a graduate student at Columbia University, studying trade policy and globalization. Participating in the global action against the World Trade Organization — the so-called “Battle of Seattle” — felt like an appropriate extracurricular activity. The Seattle action was also intimately tied to the work of my father and his colleagues. For the massive demonstrations in November 1999 against the new global trade regime were also about the future of food and how genetic engineering would affect farmers and eaters all around the world. In the streets, I heard as much from the Teamsters and environmentalists as I heard from Mexican farmers calling for protections of their corn markets in the face of American genetically engineered corn imports. Since the Pacific Declaration was penned in 1999, commodity agriculture in the US has been remade by genetic engineering. The majority of US corn and soy grown today has been genetically engineered — most of it to be resistant to the toxic herbicide Roundup. And the impacts of genetic engineering can now be felt in communities around the world burdened with exposure to toxic pesticides used in concert with these crops, including the tens of thousands suffering from cancers thought to be linked to the weedkiller Roundup — with lawsuits pending against its producer, Bayer (which bought Monsanto in 2018). Today, despite the urging of scientists like those who penned the Pacific Declaration, there are no precautionary principles in the US regulatory system for these technologies. When my dad and his colleagues wrote the Pacific Declaration, it was a call for all of us to ask big questions of this new genetic age: Who benefits? Who is harmed? How do these decisions affect future generations? Twenty years later, these questions are just as pressing.

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.