Regeneration International

The Billion Agave Project is a game-changing ecosystem-regeneration strategy recently adopted by several innovative Mexican farms in the high-desert region of Guanajuato.

This strategy combines the growing of agave plants and nitrogen-fixing companion tree species (such as mesquite), with holistic rotational grazing of livestock. The result is a high-biomass, high forage-yielding system that works well even on degraded, semi-arid lands.

The system produces large amounts of agave leaf and root stem—up to one ton of biomass over the 8-10-year life of the plant. When chopped and fermented in closed containers, this plant material produces an excellent, inexpensive (two cents per pound) animal fodder. This agroforestry system reduces the pressure to overgraze brittle rangelands and improves soil health and water retention, while drawing down and storing massive amounts of atmospheric CO2.

Learn more about the Billion Agave Project here: https://regenerationinternational.org/billion-agave-project

Dr. Vandana Shiva joins Andre Leu in a conversation about the state of biodiversity, regeneration, food sovereignty, and freedom in the world.

The global best practice model for funding and scaling up regenerative and organic food and farming comes to us from Australia, which has more organically certified farmland and pastureland than any other nation in the world. Veteran organic farmers in Australia have come up with an alternative solution to the global fraud of carbon trading and carbon credits, and corporate greenwashing. They call their new system, which we at OCA and Regeneration International believe is a global game-changer, “Organic Eco-Credits.”

In this video, Ben Dobson of the Hudson Carbon Project and Ronnie Cummins, international director of the Organic Consumers Association and Regeneration International steering committee member, discuss the need for Organic Eco-Credits in North America.

Then Regeneration International Director, Andre Leu, interviews two leaders, Carolyn Suggate and Greg Paynter, of Australia’s new organization, the Organic and Regenerative Investment Coop (ORIC). ORIC website: https://organicinvestmentcooperative.com.au/eco-credit/

Listen as they explain how Australian farmers and investors are creating a new paradigm of Organic Eco-Credits and Bonds.

What’s going on with our kids?

As of 2011, 43% of US children (32 million) had chronic health conditions, increasing to 54.1% when overweight, obesity, or being at risk for developmental delays was included. This data is 13 years old and newer studies suggest that these numbers continue to escalate to shocking levels.

As any parent knows, trying to get to the root cause of common problems like extra weight, allergies, asthma, gastrointestinal upset, eczema, learning challenges or behavioral issues can be maddening.

Thankfully, there are some moms, doctors and scientists out there who don’t give up.
In this conversation, Organic Consumers Association’s Political Director Alexis Baden-Mayer talks to three such women: pediatrician Michelle Perro, scientist Stephanie Seneff, and Moms Across America founder Zen Honeycutt.

These three super sleuths investigated common toxic exposures, widespread health disorders and the medical literature until they identified a central factor in what’s making our children sick: Foods that have been genetically engineered to soak up Monsanto (now Bayer)’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer.

They didn’t stop there. Listen to this information-packed interview to learn more.

Midwest Healthy Ag is a research project dedicated to listening to farmers and farming communities in the midwest of the USA about agriculture, the environment, community, and health. Learn more here: https://midwesthealthyag.org/

Based in Kotagiri in the heart of the Nilgiri mountains, Last Forest Enterprise has been a market intermediary for wild forest produce that is harvested by indigenous communities since 2010. These communities are working on forest and agriculture produce, which are natural, wild and local.

Konrad Hauptfleisch is the Head of Capacity Development at IFOAM - Organics International, and has managed the Organic Academy since 2012. He brings 20 years of experience in management, facilitation, training and grassroots sector development.

Nate was born in Philadelphia. He graduated from Abington Friends School in 2000 and from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 2004. Following college, he worked as a landscaper, camp counselor, office manager, and theatrical spotlight operator, before committing himself to a life of activism. He has worked in a variety of jobs in politics and organizing, including Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and Joe Sestak's 2010 U.S. Senate campaign, though he quit his last “real job” in 2012 (as an organizer with the Service Employees International Union). He is grateful to consider himself equal parts farmer and organizer today.

As a volunteer, Nate has been involved in efforts ranging from the Sudan Freedom Walk to Occupy Sandy. He has participated in foreign delegations to Mexico, Honduras, and Cuba. He helped found InterOccupy, an open communication platform for activists, and used it to help coordinate Occupy Sandy New Jersey. He ran for U.S. Congress in 2012 (and was called “the first Occupy candidate” by Politico magazine). He has served on the Executive Board of the Project for Nuclear Awareness, the Cumberland County (NJ) Long Term Recovery Group, and the Jewish Social Policy Action Network. He is a member of the Seed Advisory Committee of the Non-GMO Project, the Education Committee of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey (NOFA-NJ), and Vice President of GMO Free Pennsylvania. As a plant breeder and researcher, Nate has a broad range of interests, but he is most engaged at the moment in the pursuit of climate stabilizing perennial staple crops, especially sorghum.

Nate now works with the Experimental Farm Network: https://www.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/

Helena Norberg-Hodge is a pioneer of the new economy movement and recipient of the Alternative Nobel prize, the Arthur Morgan Award and the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.” She is author of the inspirational classic Ancient Futures, and Local is Our Future (2019). She is co-author of Bringing the Food Economy Home and From the Ground Up, and producer of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness. Helena is the founder and director of Local Futures and The International Alliance for Localisation, and a founding member of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Ecovillage Network.

Sundeep Kamath is a Biodynamic Advisor having professional expertise in the wide spectrum of the Organic/Biodynamic food landscape, from Biodynamic Agriculture production to market linkages based on Associative Economics. He has been the Secretary of the Biodynamic Association of India & is currently on the Board of IFOAM Asia & is the General Secretary of AIONA.