Living Democracy, Feeding Hope

Photo: Enrique Pérez S/ANEC Originally published on Medium , June 6, 2019 I was surprised to find seed giant Monsanto almost everywhere I went to research my book, Eating Tomorrow . But my closest encounter came early, during a five-hour meeting in 2014 with six Monsanto executives in the company’s high-rise office in Mexico. Monsanto and other seed companies were trying to open Mexico to genetically modified corn. At the time of that meeting, the gene giant had been stopped in its tracks by La Demanda Colectiva , a group of farmer, environmental, and community groups who in October 2013 had won an injunction that suspended the companies’ experimental planting on the grounds that it threatened Mexico’s rich diversity of native corn varieties. Scientists called it “gene flow.” Corn farmers called it “genetic pollution.” I confess: when I arrived in Mexico in 2014, I was not confident that the country’s dynamic social movements could stop the companies. An appeal filed by Monsanto was pending before another judge. As I wrote in Eating Tomorrow, “Since it was Easter Sunday, I attended mass at San Hipólito Church in the heart of Mexico’s historic city center. Locally, the 18th century church is known less for Saint Hipólito than for San Judas Tadeo, the ‘patron saint of lost causes,’ according to the translation at the church entrance. I didn’t think the GM lawsuit was a lost cause, but it sure seemed a long shot. I lit a candle and said a prayer. I’m not Catholic, nor even very religious, but it seemed the least I could do. The next day, the judge denied Monsanto’s request, leaving the injunction in place.” Remarkably, that injunction has held for more than five years, withstanding a series of legal challenges. And now Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has promised to ban the cultivation of GM corn. Given those remarkable victories, it seems a good time to revisit my surreal 2014 encounter with Monsanto in Mexico. Being a good journalist, I had asked Monsanto for an interview. I expected a polite “no” or a meeting with a private in the company’s public relations army. Instead, I was greeted by six company officials. Frida Kahlo should have been there. A company official actually told me their goal was to help Mexico achieve “food sovereignty.” I nearly fell off my chair. That is the term coined by radical farmer organizations to protect themselves from multinational firms such as Monsanto who are trying to impose their technologies on small-scale farmers. That would be my closest encounter with the genetically modified mind. I think I came away uncontaminated. I certainly felt like a corn borer in a field of GM corn; I know I didn’t eat a thing while I was there. I documented the interview in a series of three articles that at the time ran in different publications. I bring them together below with links to the original pieces, which were also translated into Spanish and published in Mexico. The stories are also woven into my book chapter, “Monsanto Invades Corn’s Garden of Eden in Mexico.” Monsanto was everywhere I went for my book. In Malawi, they had taken over the national seed company and shelved one of the country’s most popular and productive corn seeds; Monsanto’s former country director had co-authored Malawi’s national seed policy, which threatened to outlaw the widespread practice of farmers saving, exchanging, and selling their seeds. In Mozambique the company was pushing its Water Efficient Maize for Africa scheme, as a way to open the country up to genetically modified corn. India’s cotton farmers were abandoning GM cotton, which put them into debt as local insects developed resistance to the GM insecticide and devoured farmers’ crops. In the United States, of course, blanketed in GM corn and soybeans, three lawsuits have won damage judgments of more than $2 billion for company neglect in failing to warn people that its Roundup herbicide causes cancer. In my book travels, I thought often of Vandana Shiva’s brilliant essay, “Monocultures of the Mind,” on the reductionism of Western science subordinated to commercial interests. She wrote it even before GM crops came into widespread use. Their quick dominance in places like the United States seemed to illustrate her central thesis, almost to the point of caricature. As one Mexican farm leader told me, “Our problems are not solved with one gene.” Now the gene giants are losing. Bayer bought Monsanto and now faces multi-billion-dollar liabilities for its cancer-causing herbicide, with more than 13,000 plaintiffs lined up in the United States alone. In Mexico, a judge banned GM soybeans in the Yucatan after pollen contaminated the beehives of organic honey-producers. And, remarkably, the injunction on GM corn is still in place five years after I said my Easter prayer. I’m a believer, in San Judas Tadeo and in the power of determined, well-organized people to bring down the gene giants…. Read the full article, with the three-part series, on Medium …

Photo from Radcliffe Institute. 2019 Radcliffe Medalist Dolores Huerta. Photo by Tony Rinaldo Below is the speech Frances Moore Lappé gave on May 31, 2019 when participating in a discussion panel at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University during Radcliffe Day 2019 which honored Dolores Huerta by awarding her their highest honor, the Radcliffe Medal, which they give annually to an individual who embodies their commitment to excellence, inclusion, and social impact. Soon after Diet for a Small Planet, I summed up my message this way: Hunger isn’t caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy. hmm… I could hear my audiences thinking: Nice sound bite, lady; But what is this democracy that can end hunger? Over decades of searching for answers, I’ve been grateful for our founders’ insight that democracy requires citizens to have an independent voice, and therefore an economic stake, so we’re not dependent and vulnerable to tyranny. Alexander Hamilton warned “Power over a man’s subsistence [food] amounts to power over his will,” And John Adams? “Monopolized” property is a “curse to mankind.” “Equal liberty” requires every “member of society” to own land. And not that long ago--from the 40s to the early 70s--we were moving toward “equal liberty” where everyone has a stake--as real family income doubled for every class, and the poor gained most. Then, tragically it changed as wealth began gushing to the top. Now 3 people at the top control more wealth than the bottom half, as most of us live paycheck to paycheck. And in food and farming? One in 8 Americans is “food insecure.” And even those with enough are harmed by a diet implicated in most noncommunicable diseases. The world’s largest seed and pesticide company now Bayer/Monsanto can for 2 decades suppress information about the health risks of its products. Farmland moves into ever fewer hands. Five white men, for example, control more farmland than 33,000 African-American landowners. And, even farmers with title to land lack independence. Three corporate chicken giants, for example, control 90 percent of the market. They dictate the terms. And climate change? U.S. agriculture is a significant contributor. Just since 1990 U.S. agriculture’s carbon emissions have increased 16 percent. At the same time, every day we know more about climate-friendly, regenerative farming methods for healthy eating. So why aren’t they taking off? Because our democracy is broken. So here are my takeaways: All of us passionate about food justice and sustainability can enlarge our identity still further…Years ago, finishing World Hunger 10 Myths and struggling to dig to the root democracy crisis --a friend told me: “Frankie you know you can love 2 children at once.” Photo from Radcliffe Institute. Sara Bleich, Daniel A. Sumner, Frances Moore Lappé, Jennifer Gordon, and Alice Waters. Photo by Tony Rinaldo. Yes! Food AND democracy…I don’t have to choose! (Of course it helps that real-life daughter Anna Lappé is leading Real Food Media .) Only with accountable democracy, will we have a shot at sane policies. And great news? A citizen-led Democracy Movement is emerging, so whatever our primary passion, we can join those going to the root of the democracy crisis: fighting against voter suppression, gerrymandering and money’s grip on politics. In last fall’s midterms this movement passed 18 democracy reform measures across the country. Exciting! AND in the coming presidential election there are candidates backing these democracy reforms AND economic/food reforms. Warren calls for trust busting in agriculture and end to “abusive contract farming.” And Sanders’ plans would target subsidies to farmers who most need them and hold Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) accountable for pollution. Yes, we CAN love 2 children at once--knowing that in advancing the Democracy Movement we are advancing the food-justice and sustainability movement. To help all Americans join in, we at Small Planet are partnering with the Democracy Initiative , a collaborative of 70+ groups from Common Cause to NAAP to Food & Water Watch --to soon launch an online gateway-- democracymovement.us . Please ask me about it. We can make connections we’ve never made before… because in this do-or-die moment for life on Earth, we must be more effective than we’ve ever been before. A Final note: We don’t have to be optimists. That might be too hard. But we can become possibilists. I mean simply that in our connected world of continuous change, it is not possible to know what’s possible. Who in 1955--when you, Dolores Huerta began organizing--could have predicted you would go on to co-found the United Farm Workers (UFW), endure almost multiple arrests, police brutality, wake America up to the plight of farmworkers & improve the lives of millions? You, Dolores Huerta, enable me to be a hardcore possibilist. I am forever grateful.

University of San Francisco Commencement at St. Ignatius Church ( Source USF Commencement webpage) Below is the speech that Frances Moore Lappé gave on May 18, 2019 at the University of San Francisco to accept the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, and deliver the Commencement Address to the graduates receiving degrees in the Humanities and Sciences from the College of Arts and Sciences. Thank you, President, Dr. Rev. Fitzgerald and the Board of Trustees for the great honor you’ve bestowed on me. Good morning to you. And, to Provost Heller, Dean Camperi, faculty and staff of the University, families, graduates, and dearest friends, good morning! To have your attention at this most auspicious moment in your lives is a huge honor. So huge, I feel I can do nothing less than pack a lifetime’s learning into 12 minutes. Or try! Imagine me just a few years older than you. I feared my community organizing work wasn’t addressing root causes of so much suffering around me. So, I stopped to ask: How do I get to the roots? I was terrified. I feared someone would ask me what I was doing with my life…and I’d have no answer. So I stayed home, cried…What if I never find direction? But soon a thought. Oh! Why don’t I start with what’s most basic of all… food. Everyone has to eat, and at the time, food and hunger were in our culture’s ether. Two books especially stirred fear: Population Bomb. scary. And Famine 1975 predicted imminent, widespread starvation. Hmmm…I thought: the first thing all living creatures do is feed themselves and their offspring, so why are we, the brightest species, failing…badly? If I could answer that big one… wow, maybe I’d unlock the mysteries of economics and politics and I’d have direction. So, my first question became Why hunger? Our culture’s answer: “Not enough”! So, I asked: Is it true? Burrowed in the UCB ag library, I discovered “no,” there’s more than enough. Thus, my first ah-ha: Out of plenty, we humans are actually creating the experience of scarcity. I was forever changed. I then had to ask why are we failing in a primal task other creatures have mastered? Maybe it’s that we humans are creatures of the mind. We see the world through filters we create. So, we can’t see what we don’t expect to see. I other words, for humans: Believing is seeing, not the other way around. And that realization only kept my questions growing. By the turn of this century I arrived at this huge one: Why are we together creating a world that that as individuals none of us would ever choose? After all, No one turns off the alarm in the morning asking: What can I do today to ensure another child dies from hunger? Yet, worldwide, poor nutrition contributes to almost half of deaths in young children. This aspect of human existence -- “believing is seeing”-- suggests our big brain can be a big problem. Of course, concepts our brainy selves conjure up help us survive, but what happens when they are false? Especially now that our species is in charge, with evolutionary impact, our bad ideas can, well, end life on planet Earth. And one of those bad ideas with great power? An atomistic, mechanistic understanding of nature, including our own. I summarize it in three Ss: Separation: we’re each separate from all else. Static: reality is pretty fixed, and Scarcity, never enough of anything. Fortunately, in my lifetime, and none too soon, science is awakening humanity to a very different, in many ways ancient, worldview. The ecological worldview: In it, all life is connected and continuous change, and therefore we’re all co-creators … Within an ecological worldview every element is continually shaped by all others. As German physicist Hans Peter Duerr once said, “Frankie, in ecological systems, There are no participants only participants.” So, my next question became, what is the human essence that gets shaped by its ever-changing context? Our culture’s answer is easy: Peel away the fluff and we are materialistic, competitive, and selfish. I say, Yes. We can be. But evidence mounts of human capacities for empathy, cooperation, and deep sensitivity to fairness. We are the most social of primates So, the next question seemed obvious, given our capacity both for power hoarding and cruelty as well as cooperation and fairness…what conditions (i.e. what social ecosystems) bring forth humans’ life-promoting capacities? I looked around, from all workplaces I’ve known to government at every level… to horrific moments of human cruelty and found this: We humans do best when: One. Power is shared and fluid. Two: Public relationships are transparent, and; Three: When we cultivate a norm of mutual accountability, the opposite of today’s blame game. Mutual accountability? Simple: Since we’re all connected, we’re all implicated. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel expresses it this way: “Some are guilty, but all are responsible.” And those three conditions… another word for them? Democracy! And why do they work? They enable more of us to meet deepest needs to thrive beyond our physical needs. One. A sense of agency or voice. Two. Meaning in our lives, and; Three. Connection with others. Only democracy has a chance of meeting these essentials of human dignity. So, what have I learned? From my moment of panic over lack of direction at age 25, I learned that all that’s required is that I stay open to my own questions and to use each to dig, dig until I have answers…answers leading me to the next question and to the question behind that question. And never to stop. Finally, I want to close with three takeaways in this now long journey that can keep me going right now! First: In our relational world of connection, change, cocreation, NO ONE is ever powerless. Forget that idea. In our relational world, the only choice we don’t have is whether to change the world. Every act we take, and don’t take, changes the world. Someone is always watching. You never know who. Rebecca Solnit tells the story of a rainy day in the early 1960s when Women Strike for Peace protested above-ground nuclear testing at the Washington Monument. They reported feeling “foolish and futile.” But, years later they learned Dr. Benjamin Spock had driven by that day. Oh, he thought, if these women “are so passionately committed,” maybe I should pay attention to the issue. The world famous “baby doctor” then became the leading opponent of nuclear testing. And two years later, President Kennedy signed a Test Ban Treaty. So, yes, someone is always watching. And you many never know. A second realization orienting my life. Our species’ biggest challenge may NOT be that we’re too selfish. Maybe it’s the opposite, that we’re too social. As social creatures, we want to stay inside the pack. So, even as our “pack” is heading over the cliff -- now, with imminent climate catastrophe -- it’s hard to break away, to stand alone. So maybe humans good enough, and what need most to work on now is COURAGE -- willingness to break with the pack, to stand alone if needed. And how do we stoke our courage? There’s only one sure way: By doing what we thought we could not do. By risk! And, that means getting familiar with fear: learning it is not a stop sign, for we can reframe fear as pure energy…energy we can use as we choose. All you surfers and skiers know, you already know there’s a fine line between fear and exhilaration! So that pounding heart of fear? I know it well. I used to say to myself: “You wimp! What’s your problem?” But I decided to reframe: Oh, yeah, that’s really my inner applause cheering me on! Recently my granddaughters, Ida and Rosa, took me to school when a new class rule was being introduced. The rule? “Be an ally.” And, in an assembly an 9-year-old explained what the students call it the “courage rule”: It means “Do the right thing even when you’re scared,” she said. Also, because we are social creatures, we can have confidence that we’ll become bolder if we hang out with courage. So, choose friends bolder than up are. Their courage contagious. And a third freeing realization? Within an ecological worldview, in which the nature of life is connection in continuous change, it is simply not possible to know what’s possible. This means that hope -- itself a source of power as it re-organizes our brains toward solutions -- does not require we be optimists. I’m not. I’m a diehard possibilist. We don’t need certainty, nor even high probability of success. A sense of possibility is all we humans need to come alive, to feel the thrill of walking with fear, knowing that we cannot know the outcome of our acts, but certain that someone is changed. For sure, we ourselves are. In closing, may I leave you with my hope for you: May you find your question & then the question behind that question, and the next…each taking you, of course, to the scary unknown. As you encounter each unknown, may your learning in this extraordinary institution have enabled you to encourage courage in yourself and in others. All the while remembering that most of us do not need to be heroes to the world. No. When our time comes, all we need for fulfillment is to know we have been heroes to ourselves. Thank you again for this great honor.

Almost a decade ago, I published a book arguing that to address the climate crisis we must transform not only our energy system, but our food system, too. So I was thrilled to see the Times feature on this critical theme. It’s just as important to talk about changing how we produce our food as it is to question what we eat. Yes, those of us in meat-gobbling America could reduce our burger intake, but swapping out Quarter Pounders for heavily processed plant-based fare produced in unsustainable ways is not the answer. Indeed, the science is showing just what a crucial role organic and agro-ecological farming practices play in reducing farm emissions and improving soil health, while fostering resiliency to droughts and floods and soil-based carbon sequestration. These farming approaches also protect farmers, workers and eaters from brain-damaging, cancer-causing, infertility-inducing pesticides, and they promote the biodiversity and insect health essential for food security, and, heck, planetary survival. Anna Lappé Berkeley, Calif. The writer is the author of “Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It.”

The top one-tenth of 1 percent controls as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, while roughly a fifth of American children live in poverty, and half of American infants are so poor they depend on public aid to eat.(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Originally published on Common Dreams May 8, 2019. It’s easy to feel fatalistic, accepting as “just the way things are” an America in which the top one-tenth of 1 percent controls as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, while roughly a fifth of American children live in poverty, and half of American infants are so poor they depend on public aid to eat. But wait. What if we were to acknowledge — to really let sink in — that we have arrived at this tragic place in no time at all, historically speaking? Might we even feel entitled to hope and thus motivated to work for transformational shift of the kind the Green New Deal now envisions? One in which we effectively address climate change as we also tackle economic inequity? First, though, check out the chart below. Source: Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America, 2006/7, Chapter I, Figure 11, from Bureau of the Census, CPS (all data deflated). In ten columns is the tale of two generations. The blue bars capture the late 1940s through the early ‘70s when real family income roughly doubled for every income quintile, with the poor gaining the most. Then…whoa! From the early ‘70s through the early 2000s, progress slows radically and the pattern of who gains most reverses: The richest score big time, while the poorest advance virtually not at all. Such dramatically deepening inequality has continued to worsen, not only reducing economic opportunities but shortening lives as well: The life-span gap between the richest and poorest American males is 15 years , and in recent years, overall longevity has declined . The contrasts between these two generations is staggering; but now consider an international comparison that might strike some as yet more shocking. America, long-perceived as a paragon of “middle class” prosperity, now ranks by family income inequality as more extreme than over 100 countries , from Russia to Bangladesh to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to the CIA World Factbook. These contrasts alone should signal the truth that there is nothing inevitable about this disgrace. Not long ago we experienced more equitable income growth, linked to much greater prosperity. So, what happened to us? Most important, our beliefs changed — or rather, they were changed. We humans are creatures of the mind. We create our world according to what we believe is both right and possible, and our ideas, absorbed via story, create filters through which we see. So “believing is seeing,” not the other way around. Both Plato and the Hopi Indians are credited with noting, “those who tell the story rule the world”; and in these two periods, different storytellers told very different stories. In the first period (blue bars), Americans absorbed the notion that we could all advance together — that government was established to support the “general welfare.” After all, that is what our constitution’s preamble affirms as a purpose of our government. The first period benefited from FDR’s New Deal that catalyzed sweeping gains for all Americans — from establishing the minimum wage and Social Security, to strengthening workers’ rights to organize, to bolstering banking industry rules. Well into mid-century, both Republicans and Democrats embraced government as a partner in setting standards and expanding opportunity. Republican Dwight Eisenhower ran on a platform that included the pledge to “more effectively protect the rights of labor unions” and to “assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex”; Democrat Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, which helped cut the poverty rate almost in half between 1959 and 1969; and Republican Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air act into law in 1970. But soon, the business community feared it was losing ground and began actively, and effectively, putting forth an opposing story, as laid out in Jane Mayer’s Dark Money. In 1971, the Chamber of Commerce commissioned a corporate lawyer, Lewis Powell, to prepare a game plan, known now as the “ Powell Memo ,” for regaining ground for business. Soon thereafter, in 1977, Ronald Reagan warned Americans to “use the vitality and the magic of the marketplace to save this way of life.” And by 1981, he famously declared, “ in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem .” In the ensuing decades, the story that a market freed from government tampering would bring prosperity for all was propagated through big-money-funded think tanks, politicians, the media, and educational materials, from grade school to graduate school. Legislation and court decisions have weakened protections, making it harder, for example, for labor to organize. In the 1960s, about a third of workers were union members, but today this figure is less than 10 percent . And since 1968, when our minimum wage was $8.68 (in 2016 adjusted dollars), its purchasing power has fallen by 16 percent . Safety nets were tattered, too, as Bill Clinton’s welfare reform ended “ welfare as we know it .” We often hear the reversal of the second period blamed on job-killing technology and “globalization” in which corporations shift operations, and thus jobs, to low-wage countries where workers have few, if any, protections. So, of course, American workers’ bargaining power eroded. But, if true, other industrial nations’ labor markets would have seen a shift of wealth to the top similar to ours. But no. Western Europe saw only a modest increase in inequality. Today we are also told that fighting for transformative change is naïve, that the Green New Deal, for example, is unrealistic because it prioritizes economic equity as integral to confronting climate change. However, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s brilliant video message , set in an imagined future in which we look back on successes achieved today, asks us to believe we can change this story. Showing us possibilities that can arise from a Green New Deal, she declares, “we can be anything we have the power to see.” Looking back now on the “tale of two generations,” it’s clear that when we Americans have acted from the premise of connected fates and have stayed true to our constitution’s mandate to promote the “general welfare,” we have accomplished what was before believed to be impossible. Indeed, given America’s revolutionary birth, isn’t transformational change our very birthright?

Originally published on Fern's AG Insider , May 1, 2019 by Leah Douglas For decades, conversations about global agricultural production have revolved around one question: How do we feed the world? Those conversations have often been driven by philanthropies, governments, and companies that share an interest in the industrialization of agriculture. But the introduction of monocropping and agrochemicals has not brought us closer to achieving the goal of food security, according to a new book on how to feed the world’s people in an environmentally and economically sustainable manner. Timothy A. Wise , senior researcher at the Small Planet Institute and senior research fellow at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute, spent four years researching the industrialization of agriculture and the influence of agribusiness on policy creation around the world. His research took him to Iowa, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Mexico, and the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Everywhere he went, he saw how governments and philanthropies have committed to a vision of hunger eradication that heralds industrial, large-scale agriculture. His new book, Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food , details how this vision has largely failed to bring countries closer to food security even as it has imperiled our water, soil, and farming communities. FERN’s Leah Douglas spoke to Wise last month. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Much of your book traces agricultural industrialization trends that originated in the U.S. How are we in the U.S. “eating tomorrow” with unsustainable agricultural practices? I was struck in my research in Iowa by how badly the industrial model of agriculture was working for Iowans. Waterways are heavily polluted by agricultural runoff, which only got worse when farmers took some 500,000 acres out of conservation to grow more corn, trying to take advantage of the ethanol-induced run-up in prices 10 years ago. The state has lost half its topsoil, with conservation tillage practiced on only a small share of its corn and soybean acres. When that bomb cyclone hit a few weeks ago, the floods washed away topsoil that was completely exposed. The constant expansion of factory farms creates the need for excessive manure applications, adding to the water pollution. Those farms are also draining aquifers, since it takes about five gallons of water a day to raise a hog in confinement. Even the nutritional quality of the corn is deteriorating, as starchier varieties, with lower protein content, are released to adapt to declining soil quality and the changing climate. Climate change, of course, only increases the environmental costs of industrial-scale farms. Rains are more inconsistent, droughts are projected to be more frequent. “Hundred-year” floods now happen every 25 years…. (Read the full interview at FERN )

Originally Published on Heated by Medium x Bittman , April 30, 2019 One version of an old joke features a shipwrecked economist on a deserted island who, when asked by his fellow survivors what expertise he can offer on how they can be rescued, replies, “Assume we have a boat.” Economists have a well-deserved reputation for making their theories work only by making unrealistic assumptions about how the real world operates. I was reminded of the joke often in the five years I traveled the world researching my book, Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food . Policy-makers from Mexico to Malawi, India to Mozambique, routinely advocated large-scale, capital-intensive agricultural projects as the solution to widespread hunger and low agricultural productivity, oblivious to the reality that such initiatives generally displace more farmers than they employ. Where are the displaced supposed to go? “Assume we have employment,” can be the only answer, because economic growth sure wasn’t generating enough jobs to absorb those displaced from rural areas. No one can sail home on an economist’s assumed boat. And assumed jobs wouldn’t address the chronic unemployment and under-employment that characterize most developing countries. With demographic shifts creating youth bulges, job-creation remains an urgent priority. Indeed, growing populations are often portrayed as a demographic "time bomb," conjuring images of unemployed youth joining gangs, insurgent groups, or just falling into despair in urban slums. But what if we saw all those unemployed workers as a resource rather than a curse? Economist Michael Lipton and others have long argued that the bulge in working-age youth can be a demographic dividend rather than a demographic time bomb, but only with policies that focus on creating and rewarding work, beginning with labor-intensive farming in agricultural societies. That is exactly what I see starting to happen in Mexico under its new president…. Read the full article on Heated by Medium x Bittman….

Sen. Elizabeth Warren sits down with CNBC's John Harwood for a "Speakeasy" interview. "I believe in markets," she said. "But only fair markets. Markets with rules." (Source: CNBC video 7/24/2018) Originally published on Common Dreams , April 26. 2019 My headline poses a question I struggle with. “Capitalism” suggests an economy driven by owners of private capital, typically with the aim of bringing the highest possible return to themselves, and I am sure that is not what Senator Elizabeth Warren stands for. Warren has made clear that what she wants (and I do, too!) is “ accountable capitalism , ” a market economy that works for all of us because it responds to all of us—a market that’s truly competitive and always open to newcomers. Not what we have now. Today in the US, just two companies control more than half the market in twelve major industries. Four control nearly 90 percent of the total global grain trade. Six control 90 percent of American media , and four control over 80 percent of air travel. What Warren lauds are “fair markets, markets with rules.” Without them, she explains, it’s “about the rich tak[ing] it all…And that’s what’s gone wrong in America.” So, I wonder, why call oneself a capitalist? Capitalism and a market economy are not to be conflated. A market is made more vital by including many enterprises that are not owned by capital. They include cooperative, community-owned, and publicly owned enterprises. Plus, there are B Corporations and “Benefit Corporations,” owned by private capital but committing to serve social ends. In these forms of enterprise, accountability is built into their DNA, and it’s working. The US is home to over 64,000 cooperatives ; and worldwide total sales of co-ops come to about $3 trillion, a sum equal to the total equity ownership of the five global tech giants : Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook. Globally, 10 percent of those employed work for a co-op. Also, contributing to a healthy market economy are publicly owned entities, not held by private corporations. Of the 3,175 US electric utilities , about 63 percent are publicly owned, and 29 percent are rural electric cooperatives. 900 electric cooperatives provide electricity to more than half of our nation’s landmass in forty-seven states, and their customers typically pay less: On average, US public power customers pay rates 6.9 percent lowe r than paid by those of investor-owned utilities. Surprisingly, in the red state of Nebraska, all electricity is supplied by cooperatives and public utilities. Another example of a competitive, publicly owned enterprise is the Bank of North Dakota , founded nearly 100 years ago. Mainly, it serves the state’s financial firms and state agencies, but it also helps citizens directly by serving those without access to private banking. Yet another approach is community ownership , businesses financed solely by locals. For example, in Walsh, Colorado, population 600, a community-owned grocery store saves people a 40-mile roundtrip drive to the nearest supermarket. Community ownership is not unique to the US. The UK is home to a couple dozen towns with community owned store s , including pubs! And “B” and “Benefit Corporations”? The first is a company certified as having positive social impact— on employees, customers, the planet. Scores are published for the public to see. Currently, almost 3,000 US companies are B Corp-accredited across 150 industries. A Benefit Corporation also commits to serving broad, social betterment but is not independently certified. A vibrant market economy, welcoming all these forms of ownership, needs a polity creating values boundaries in which it operates. As noted, Warren made this point strongly. A “fair market,” as opposed to the fictional “free market,” requires a democracy enforcing rules already on the books—those, for example, preventing monopoly and protecting health and safety—and creating new rules as needed. If “capitalism” is inaccurate, what term does best capture the goal of such a vibrant, fair market economy? One with more accountable forms of ownership and protected from private, monopoly power or bureaucratic overreach? “Socialism” can mislead because it’s often equated with top-down government control. So, I vote for “economic democracy” enabling a “fair market”. It suggests a market economy promoting and protecting life—human and otherwise—because it is accountable to promoting “general welfare.” After all, that is what our constitution’s preamble established as a goal of our new nation. And to have such an economy requires accountable political democracy, answering to us, not to big donors. Fortunately, a bold and welcoming Democracy Movement is emerging today to achieve just that. So, let’s drop the dead-end debate of capitalism versus socialism and focus on choosing terms that capture what we really mean—an open, fair, and accountable market essential to real democracy. Thank you, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for your courage in opening this dialogue.

Anna Lappé talks to environmental scientist and ecologist Francisco Sánchez-Bayo about his new research on global insect decline and the under-reported connection to agriculture. Originally Published on Civil Eats , April 17, 2019 In early 2019, the journal Biological Conservation published findings from a st udy about global insect decline that did what few such scientific journal articles ever do: It hit the front pages of major media outlets around the world. The reason? The paper found that one-third of all insect species are in serious decline around the globe and, if trends don’t improve, we could face near mass extinction of all insects within the next century. Civil Eats recently spoke with one of the lead authors, Franci sco Sánchez-Bayo of the University of Sydney, about the implications of these findings, the underreported connection to agriculture, and what we can do about it. While the story of environmental collapse, particularly climate change, has focused on species other than humans, it has been focused mainly on the fate of “charismatic megafauna” such as the iconic polar bear. Can you explain more about why your findings about insects, animals that often fly under the radar, are so significant? We don’t always appreciate insects. They’re small, many are perceived as a nuisance. But their role in an ecosystem is essential; a large proportion of vertebrates depend on insects for food. To put it bluntly, most vertebrates on the planet would not be here if it weren’t for insects. There’s also the function they play in aquatic systems: Insects help purify and aerate water. Together with micro-organisms and worms, they’re vital to soil health. It’s important to realize that insects essential. If we remove them, we disrupt all life on the planet. What surprised or alarmed you most about these findings? When we first started, we expected to see declines. We knew that from the start. I have been following the fate of bees for years and I knew that we were seeing significant declines. We had also come across a few studies on butterflies from as far back as 20 years ago that portended decline. But what surprised us was the numbers: One-third of insects are endangered. And it’s not just butterflies and bees; it’s all groups. It’s particularly [alarming] for aquatic insects and specific groups like the dung beetles. You compiled data from more than 70 studies around the world, and you noted that most of the data in your studies came from the global North. How confident are you that this sampling is representative of global insect decline? We looked at 73 studies, and we are now including three more that were brought to our attention since we published our first article. The fact that most of these studies are from the Northern Hemisphere is undeniable: We were looking for long-term trends, in particular, and only Europe and North America have records that go back 100 years or more. Unfortunately, countries with the largest biodiversity—China, Brazil, Australia, for example—don’t have good studies we could rely on. There were none in China and Australia, and only one from Brazil. But the 20 percent of studies that came from regions beyond North America and Europe, Central America, Southeast Asia, etc., all showed the same problems. And the drivers of this decline are common to all these countries no matter what region we’re talking about. Can you say more about those drivers? It’s a combination of habitat loss, pollution, biological factors, and climate change. But if you go deeper, you realize that the biggest drivers—habitat loss and pollution—are jointly found in agriculture expansion. So, without a doubt, agriculture is the main driver of the decline of insects, more than all the other factors combined. What has been the response from your peers? We’ve received hundreds of emails, saying essentially, “Yes, you are right.” Some publications have criticized us for being alarmist. We only use the word “catastrophic” once, and we use it very carefully. We chose that word deliberately: If 30 percent of insects, the largest group of animals on Earth, are in danger, that is catastrophic. Damage from a tropical cyclone can be characterized as catastrophic, but that is localized. This is global. This is a true catastrophe. The paper points very clearly to the damaging impacts of agricultural chemicals around the world; considering that, what has the reaction been from the chemical industry? We haven’t had much pushback. I received one email from someone from a chemical company. He was very polite, but said that I was unfairly blaming pesticides. [He pointed out that] there are other causes: light pollution, for instance. I demonstrated he was partially right, but mostly wrong. The fact that we point to agriculture as the main culprit and to pesticides as one of the main factors is based on the evidence, examples from the literature. Understand that our study is not an experimental study that can be subject to criticism or misinterpretation. It is based on actual numbers derived from 73 studies all over the world over 30 years. If that’s not evidence enough, then tell me what is? Let’s talk about the pesticides that you flagged as most concerning: neonicotinoids [also known by the shorthand “neonics”] and fipronil. Why are these particularly worrisome? These insecticides have been introduced in last 25-30 years and there are features that make them different from older chemicals. First, they’re extremely toxic, particularly fipronil: it’s the most toxic ever produced to all insects and to many other organisms. Neonics are also highly toxic. They’re also soluble in water. So when they’re applied, they don’t just stay in the place you spray or in the soil. When you get that first rainwater, they go everywhere. Because they’re soluble, they thought they could be used as systemic pesticides that you would apply at the time of planting and because there would be no drift, there would be less impact on the environment. But the risk of drift is minimal compared with the risk to insects in water: Residues from these insecticides flow into the rivers and streams and go out the sea. We know that the waters in North America are completely contaminated with neonics and the same is true in Japan, Canada, and in many other places. All the insects in these waterways are rapidly disappearing. These insecticides have a delayed and long-term effect, which is not well understood by the authorities that regulate them. When you apply them, they eliminate certain species, which never recover—particularly species with a long life-cycle, like dragonflies. These are the insects we’re seeing disappear the quickest. These insecticides are also causing havoc among pollinators. With many companies using these insecticides as coating on seeds—corn or oilseed rape [canola], sunflower crops, or soya beans in North America—this problem is only getting worse. And it goes against all principles of IPM [integrated pest management]. You’re using these on all seeds. When there is no evidence that there is even a pest problem, why should a whole field be contaminated? This makes no sense from a pest control and management perspective and it makes no economic sense, either. Then there’s the basic question: What’s the point of using them? They say they boost productivity but recent studies out of the EU show that there is no gain in yield by using neonics. We are using massively enormous amounts of this insecticide for no gain whatsoever. The EU has evaluated this and determined that coating seeds with these insecticides should be banned . These insecticides should be used only when needed, when there is a problem. The current approach—to use on all the crops, all the time, year after year—makes no sense from any perspective. What about herbicides? You note that they’re not as toxic to insects, but they’re also really damaging. Yes, we could have written much more about that. We were particularly struck by the studies showing the impact on wetlands. About half of all herbicides are water soluble, so they end up in wetlands and eliminate many weeds, which are an important food and breeding ground for insects. What about the speed of decline? Most of the declines have occurred in the last 30 years. We know that the sales of pesticides worldwide have increased exponentially in that period, mostly in underdeveloped countries in tropical areas where they spray with no controls whatsoever. Increasingly, many departments of agriculture are cutting back on the number of personnel dedicated to advising farmers on growing practices, known as extension officers. As a result, farmers don’t have pest management advice from anyone with expertise. So where do they get the advice? From chemical companies. They’re told if you have a problem, just apply this or that product. This is one reason pesticide sales have increased. I recently met two entomologists from Oaxaca who expressed their dismay that the most recent annual meeting for professionals in their field they attended had been sponsored by Bayer, one of the largest makers of chemical pesticides in the world. I’m not surprised. That happens everywhere. Your study’s findings are sobering and alarming. It left me wondering, what do you think can be done to avert this impending insect apocalypse? [Farmers] can adopt different pest-management practices. The key is to apply practical and effective solutions to eliminate pesticide use and also restore habitat across farmland. That can be done through farmer education and through policy. Governments can give incentives for using IPM to change the paradigm: Pesticides should be the tool of last resort. At the moment, many countries encourage the use of pesticides. That has to stop. Why don’t they do the same thing with IPM? Say to the farmers, “we’ll give you a tax rebate if you use less pesticides.” I also think banning products in some cases makes sense. Certain compounds, like DDT, should be banned for agricultural use, even if it’s still allowed in certain tropical countries to control malaria. If we took the time to educate farmers and put sensible practices into place to produce food without dependence on chemicals, the whole thing would change overnight. I would encourage everyone to read the conclusions in the paper: we cannot have monocultures covering hundreds of square miles. We have to plant trees and other habitats for insects. Biodiversity is the only thing that will help crops be resilient and sustainable in the long term and keep balance in the soil. When we [grow diverse crops], we can reverse this trend, but that means taking on a system completely dominated by chemical corporations. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Beautifully tended agro-ecological farm, Marracuene, Mozambique. (Photo: Timothy A. Wise) Originally published on Medium , March 17, 2019 In Mozambique’s lovely capital city of Maputo, the afternoon temperature had just hit 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Maputo is in the tropics, but this was October 2017, their springtime, and no one could remember a hotter October day. Inside the air-conditioned Radisson Blu Hotel on the city’s waterfront, African government representatives and international experts gathered for the African Union’s annual agricultural research conference. Organized by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, these conferences monitor and support African governments’ ambitious commitments since 2006 to invest in agricultural development. Well-dressed participants sipped bottled water and took on the theme for this year’s conference: “Climate-Smart Agriculture.” The day before I’d been with farmers in Marracuene, just 45 minutes up the coast from Maputo. They weren’t embracing the experts’ climate-smart initiatives but rather defending themselves from them. They wanted no part of synthetic fertilizer, which was labeled climate-smart even though it came from fossil fuels. Small-scale family farmers often referred to such practices, and the “technology package” of which they were a part, as “climate-stupid agriculture.” In southern Africa, there is nothing abstract about climate change. In the unseasonable spring heat, the women of Marracuene told me of the climate roller coaster they had been riding the last few years. They had seen their rainy seasons turn erratic and undependable, shortening the growing season. They’d seen unusually frequent and intense storms bring floods through their well-tended fields, washing away seeds, crops, and topsoil. They had suffered two consecutive years of drought, worsening the cyclical El Niño weather pattern that wreaks havoc with farmers. In those droughts, they had sweltered in heat waves they said were unprecedented, with temperatures climbing out of the nineties to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, then 106. In 2017 the thermometer hit 110 and crops baked to a crisp in the parched fields. Blessed with irrigation that allows them a second crop in the dry season, they had even seen that backfire on them. In the 2015 drought, the Incomati River, which fills their irrigation ditches with water, saw water levels so low that the Indian Ocean, four miles downriver and swollen with rising sea levels, flowed back up the dried riverbed. Irrigation canals in parts of the region filled with salt water, destroying crops and land. The women who lead Marracuene’s 7,000-member farmer associations seemed undaunted. They had their own climate adaptation strategies, and those did not involve using more fossil fuels or growing monocultures of commercial seeds…. … read the rest of the excerpt on Medium Excerpted with permission from the “Introduction” to Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (The New Press, 2019). Order the book from Indie Bound , Barnes and Noble , Amazon or your preferred bookseller.

As bright minds dig into the details of this proposal, it’s critical to keep in mind the role of food production in the climate crisis. The Green New Deal should reflect the major role that food and agriculture can play in climate mitigation and adaptation. Photo Sunrise Movement. Originally Published, Earth Island Journal, March 13, 2019 2009. That was the last year there was any significant legislation on the table to confront the climate crisis barreling down on us. The Waxman-Markey Bill passed in the House and failed in the Senate. And that was it: Over and out. Fossil fuel companies helped kill that bill and anything else aimed at regulating the industry, spending an estimated $2 billion since 2000 alone. These billions have landed blow after blow to the environmental movement and, in turn, to the planet. Now, a new Congress and reenergized environmental movement is breathing fresh life into the idea of comprehensive climate change policy — and food and agriculture could, and should, play a starring role. The Green New Deal is what it’s being called, which The Hill characterizes as “a climate change initiative that aims to fight carbon emissions by transitioning the country to 100 percent renewable energy use.” Few around the country had even heard of it just a few months ago. But in last year’s mid-term elections a number of the winning candidates, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, ran on a platform that included the Green New Deal. A week after those elections, the youth-led Sunrise Movement occupied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office demanding a select committee on the Green New Deal to hash out just what this bold vision could look like. By December 2018, a whopping 81 percent of all registered voters in a George Mason and Yale University poll — Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike — either somewhat or strongly supported the idea of a Green New Deal. Said Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff for Ocasio-Cortez, “We thought it would take a year to get a movement going around the Green New Deal … [Instead] it took weeks.” While a select committee with teeth was replaced with a climate-focused committee that has more limited powers, the conversation has shifted and popular imagination has been ignited. As bright minds dig into the details, and movements continue applying pressure, it’s critical to keep food at the forefront, not least because our food producers are so vulnerable to the crisis. As Renata Brillinger from the California Climate and Agriculture Network notes: “Farmers and ranchers are on the frontlines of the impacts of climate change, facing drought, wildfires and record-breaking weather extremes.” But food and agriculture should also be central to a Green New Deal because food producers can play a critical role in climate mitigation and adaptation. As Brillinger adds: Farmers and ranchers “are also on the frontlines of delivering powerful solutions that cut emissions and — importantly and uniquely — sink carbon by improving soil health.” This food-friendly Green New Deal can take a page from the Golden State, learning, for instance, from the work done by Brillinger and her network, which has helped to pass a suite of agriculture programs that have moved more than $200 million to farmers to incentivize storing carbon, saving water and energy, reducing methane emissions on livestock operations, and permanently protecting agricultural land. This precedent-setting policy could inspire one comprehensive food and agriculture component of the Green New Deal. It’s impossible to predict what happens next. One thing we do know: Sitting on the sidelines will only help ensure nothing does. Putting our voices behind a big and bold vision, and including food at its heart, could just made the Green New Deal a reality.

In a new book, researcher Timothy Wise argues that powerful forces shape food policies that feed corporate interests. Originally published on Civil Eats March 7, 2019 by Eva Perroni From remote villages in Malawi, Mexico, and India to ethanol refineries and industrial hog factories in the American heartland, Tim Wise has spent great deal of the last several years thinking about the big picture of food and farming. As both the director of the Land and Food Rights Program at the Small Planet Institute and a research fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, Wise has for years been thinking and writing about food and farm policies, trade, and agricultural development in the U.S. and across the globe. In his new book, Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food , Wise explores the ways in which U.S. food and agricultural policies can distort global markets and impact communities around the world. In country after country, Eating Tomorrow examines the influence of corporate agribusiness on policy, diet, and landscape. Wise explores the global expansion of genetically modified seed markets, international trade agreements, land grabs, and the biofuel boom and argues that philanthropic, agribusiness, and government bodies have formed powerful coalitions to shape food policies that feed corporate interests. “Agribusiness companies have such a powerful hold in the United States that they have convinced policy-makers and the general public—and even many farmers—that their interests are completely aligned with those of farmers,” Wise said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Civil Eats recently spoke with Wise about his new book and the policy solutions that could support small-scale farmers, the environment, and food security of the world’s poor. You write that the roots of our global agricultural problems are epitomized by Iowa and the “cornification” of the United States. Why Iowa? I had seen in my travels through southern Africa, India, and Mexico that [pesticide- and fertilizer-] intensive agriculture was failing to increase productivity in a way that could rebuild depleted soils, make small farms more resilient to climate change, or reduce rural hunger. I wanted to understand where that model came from, and Iowa seemed to have it all: vast expanses of corn and soybeans dotted with an occasional hog farm or ethanol refinery… (read the full interview at Civil Eats )