Regeneration International

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.

After decades of longstanding racism in the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) loan programs, Black farmers stand to lose their farms, land and livelihoods after a temporary injunction halted an estimated $4 billion in emergency relief passed by Congress as part of the American Rescue Act.On World Food Day, as part of the global People's Food Summit, OCA Political Director Alexis Baden-Mayer interviewed lawyer Tracy McCurty of the Black Belt Justice Center to learn about the Black Farmers' Appeal: Cancel Pigford Debt Campaign.How would agriculture be different today if the 3.9 million Black farmers emancipated from slavery by 1865 had been given land as reparations for their stolen labor and had been able to pass that land to their descendants?We've heard of the promise of “40 acres and a mule,” but in reality Black farmers coming out of slavery got nothing. Even the 400,000 acres that were negotiated by Black leaders in an agreement with General Sherman were taken back after Lincoln was shot. It was with grit and determination, and without any help, that Black farmers managed to earn 16 million acres of land by 1910. As farmer Eddie Slaughter explains in a video on the Acres of Ancestry YouTube channel, Black farmers had no education, no political clout, and no help, but they had one thing going for them. They were the ones who knew how to farm! The 16 million acres of land in 1910 was the peak of Black land ownership in America. Whites' violence against Black landowners, including 3,445 lynchings between 1882 and 1964, coupled with severe economic oppression, forced Black farmers off their land.The USDA played a large role in this, one that has continued to this day. Farmers cite multiple instances of discrimination, including:-Misplaced loan paperwork and approval delays of more than two years;-Inability to sell equipment to repay loans due to vandalism at the auction house in the form of racist graffiti on the tractors up for bid;-Loan paperwork being filed on time but funds chronically arriving too late for planting season;-Inaccurate advice about whether FSA loans could be restructured; and-Receiving loan funds weeks later in the season than white farmers in the same area, providing them with an unfair advantage in planting and harvesting a profitable crop.In 1997, Black farmers sued the USDA and won one of the largest ever civil rights settlements against the U.S. government, Pigford v. Glickman. Almost $1 billion dollars has been paid or credited to more than 13,300 Black farmers under the settlement's consent decree. There was a second lawsuit, known as Pigford II, that allowed an additional 70,000 farmers to file claims. In December 2010, Congress appropriated $1.2 billion for the second part of the case. These settlements were significant, but they did not compensate Black farmers for the full impact of the USDA's racist discrimination. As a result, over 17,000 Black farmers have been left with crushing debt, threat of foreclosure, and no way to save their family farms. Most of this debt originated from the racist misdeeds of USDA and was supposed to be canceled under the Pigford settlement, but due to a range of factors including attorney malpractice and incompetence, only 4.8 percent of the $1 billion Pigford settlement went to debt cancellation.Shockingly, the USDA continues to garnish Black farmers' tax refunds, social security, disability, and subsidy payments to cover outstanding debts. Farmer Eddie Slaughter, a double amputee, had his social security, peanut subsidy, and disability payments garnished for over nine years amounting to over $41,000.They turned to Congress with the Black Farmers' Appeal: Cancel Pigford Debt Campaign and finally, in 2021, $4 billion in debt relief was passed by Congress as part of the American Rescue Act. Section 1005 of the American Rescue Plan, signed into law on March 11, 2021, was designed to provide debt cancellation to Black farmers, and other farmers of color, who have long suffered at the hands of the USDA's harmful discrimination.Not a penny of that appropriation has reached Black farmers because the courts have sided with white farmers who claim that such payments would discriminate against them!Congress could fix this by amending the American Rescue Plan Act to forgive USDA loans for “economically distressed borrowers.” This would end up helping white farmers who didn't experience racism, but it would still provide Black farmers the relief they need without having to defend it in the courts against reverse-discrimination claims.WATCH: Justice for Black Farmers: A Conversation to Uproot Racist Policy and Plant Seeds of Redress: https://youtu.be/FbhaJ1pwgkEREAD MORE: The Nation: How Thousands of Black Farmers Were Forced Off Their Land: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/black-farmers-pigford-debt/LINKS:Black Belt Justice Center: https://acresofancestry.networkforgood.comBlack Farmers' Appeal: Cancel Pigford Debt Campaign: https://acresofancestry.org/black-farmers-appeal-cancel-pigford-debt-campaign/

Nelson Mudzingwa (Zimbabwe Smallholder Organic Farmers' Forum (ZIMSOFF), National Coordinator) is one of the founding leaders of the Shashe Agroecology School that has become one of the most successful examples that practices local diverse food production that is based on the fundamentals of their spirituality and cosmovision.His presentation is generous and thought-provoking, sharing on food production, and connection to the whole human (including spirituality). He takes us on a journey of issues surrounding nurturing soil health, local diets, seed and food sovereignty whilst celebrating their culture and way of life.Learn more at https://regenerationinternational.orgSign the regeneration pledge: https://regenerationinternational.org/pledge

Kate Mendenhall, Executive Director of the Organic Farmers Association interviews: -Ed Maltby, Executive Director of the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance-Brad Santy, Organic Dairy Farmer from Maine who recently lost his contract with Horizon Organic-Jill Smith, Executive Director of the Western Organic Dairy Producers Alliance-Jennifer Beretta, Board President of the Western Organic Dairy Producers Alliance and California Organic Dairy FarmerDiscussing how Horizon Organic just canceled their contracts with 89 Family Farms in the northeast region of the USA, creating a crisis and threatening to force those 89 Family Farms out of business.Horizon Organic's "F You" to 89 Family Farms:Be "a force for good" and conduct business "as if people and place mattered." That's what it means to be a B corporation, according to the B Corp Declaration of Interdependence. So why is B corp Danone dropping 89 family farms that produce milk for its Horizon Organic label?Lifelong dairy farmer, Wayne Bragg, 74, told the Press Herald that Danone would rather buy milk from larger farms. “They can make more money,” Bragg said. His son, Cliff Bragg, now runs Bragg Homestead in Sidney, Maine, where they have 50 milk cows. “It's not that the small farmer can't make it nowadays, but they just don't want to pick you up.”
 
Danone is leaving the Northeast region and replacing these 89 farms with larger ones closer to their processing facility in Elma, New York. Putting small pasture-based organic dairy farms out of business and replacing them with factory-farmed organic is a clear violation of B Corp ethics. That's why a coalition organized by the Organic Farmers Association has filed a complaint with B Lab. But they need your help, please support their cause by signing their petition: SIGN THE PETITION: If Horizon Organic drops small family farms, B Lab should drop Danone: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/blabcomplaint

Winona LaDuke & Frank Bibeau of Honor the Earth discuss the rights of Manoomin (Wild Rice).Globally and nationally, Winona is known as a leader in the issues of cultural-based sustainable development strategies, renewable energy, and sustainable food systems. She is one of the leaders in the work of protecting Indigenous plants and heritage foods from patenting and genetic engineering.Frank's legal work focuses on the Treaty rights of tribes and members to help protect the natural resources and for future generations.Please Make a Donation to Support the Lawsuit: Enbridge's Line 3 Oil Pipeline Violates Manoomin's Rights & Treaty Rights: https://donate.organicconsumers.org/page/33977/donate/1

Ben Dobson, Will Harris, and Ronnie Cummins discuss carbon credits and regenerative projects in their regions of North America, including an exciting new agave-based regenerative system that is greening the desert in Mexico.Learn more at https://regenerationinternational.orgSign the regeneration pledge: https://regenerationinternational.org/pledge

World-renowned author and activist Vandana Shiva delivers a message of hope and regeneration.Learn more at https://regenerationinternational.orgSign the regeneration pledge: https://regenerationinternational.org/pledge