Our Global Regeneration Revolution

The term regenerative agriculture is now being widely used, to the point that in some cases it can be seen as greenwashing and as a buzz word used by industrial agricultural systems to increase profits.

Those of us who formed Regeneration International were very aware of the way the large agribusiness corporations hijacked the term sustainable to the point is was meaningless. We were also aware of how they are trying to hijack the term of agroecology, especially through the United Nations systems and in some parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America where a little biodiversity is sprinkled as greenwash over agricultural systems that still use toxic synthetic pesticides and water soluble chemical fertilizers.

Similarly we have been concerned about the way organic agriculture standards and systems have been hijacked by industrial agribusiness.

There are also corporations that are rebranding their herbicide sprayed GMO no-till systems as regenerative.

These corporations and systems must be called out as degenerative.

Do we want to sustain the current status quo or do we want to improve and rejuvenate it? Simply being sustainable is not enough. Regeneration, by definition, improves systems.

Read “Our Global Regeneration Revolution: Organic 3.0 to Regenerative and Organic Agriculture”

 

 

RI’s response to The Ecologist

In a recent article published by The Ecologist titled “The Regenerative Ranching Racket”, author Spencer Roberts engages in deliberate fraud and makes false claims in order to try to discredit regenerative ranching, the fastest growing agricultural movement in the world.

He conducted outright fraud and lied when registering a false farm on our Farm Map and deliberately misrepresented the purpose of our Farm Map. This map is a free service that connects thousands of farmers around the world to hundreds of thousands of potential customers. It is a self-regulating service not a certification system.

RI International Director Andre Leu, wrote The Ecologist Editor Brendan Montague a response letter and, even though they sent back a generic answer, they have now pulled the article off their site.

Dishonest articles like this are not only disturbing to the organizations and individuals named, but to the whole movement. We have a big enough struggle trying to change global frameworks in agriculture. We cannot afford to have intentional undermining of the energy and work of so many people with great integrity and passion who have been working hard to build the movement to where it is now. 

If you’d like to read The Ecologist false claims about regenerative agriculture (we were able to retrieve the article despite being deleted) and RI’s response to that continue reading:

Read The Ecologist’ “The Regenerative Ranching Racket”