wise words
Ronnie Cummins on Growing a Movement
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The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years. ~Deepak Chopra
by Elizabeth Greene
the slogan, “Healthy or five decades, soil, healthy ecosyshuman rights tem, healthy plants, activist, jourhealthy food, healthy nalist and author people, healthy animals, Ronnie Cummins healthy climate.” All has campaigned for these living systems are natural health and the interconnected. Regenenvironment. Since eration of one system he co-founded the impacts another, which Organic Consumers will lead to stabilizing Association in 1998, the the climate. nonprofit has grown to a network that’s 2 million people strong, What’s the Every time you pull dedicated to promoting difference out your wallet, you organic food, regenerabetween organic tive farming and comare either casting your and regeneramerce through global vote for regeneration tive farming? initiatives that integrate or the continuation of Regenerative farming is public education, mardegeneration. Everything simply the next stage of ketplace pressure, meorganic, focusing on soil dia outreach, litigation you buy is a vote. health, carbon sequesand grassroots lobbying. tration and ecosystem His latest book, Grassroots Rising: A Call restoration. We call it “regenerative organic” to Action on Climate, Farming, Food and a because people understand organic. But Green New Deal (ChelseaGreen.com/product/ when we devised organic standards, we grassroots-rising), focuses on Regeneration didn’t completely understand soil biology International, a global network that he and and the carbon cycle. Now we know that other advocates spawned in 2015 with a goal there’s important biological life below the to reverse global warming and end world soil. We understand carbon sequestration. hunger by accelerating the transition to regenerative agriculture and land management. Regenerative organic farming rebuilds the soil, which improves food, health and eventually, the climate. It’s a transformation What is Regeneration of the food system.
International?
It’s a movement that spread when people started to understand that the climate crisis was very, very serious and connected to other crises we face—our health and farmers not being able to make a living, for example. It’s about identifying regenerative practices around the world, publicizing them and changing public policy. We use 34
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What will it require to achieve the goals of the Green New Deal, which calls for net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2030? First, consumers need to understand the
