Regeneration International is excited to announce André Leu & Ronnie Cummins newly released book:

The Regenerative Agriculture Solution
A Revolutionary Approach to Building Soil, Creating Climate Resilience, and Supporting Human and Planetary Health

Forward by Vandana Shiva
"It is a book about hope based in knowledge and practice. Read it. Practice the principles of regeneration. Grow life. Grow hope.”

This exciting new book highlights the revolutionary Billion Agave project and other groundbreaking practices that show how regenerating our forests, rangelands, and farming ecosystems can cool our planet, restore the climate, and enrich our communities.

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From Chelsea Green Publishing:

Is it possible that the solution to the global climate emergency lies in a “waste” agricultural product?

The best-kept secret in today’s world is that solutions to some of our most pressing issues—food insecurity, deforestation, overgrazing, water scarcity, rural poverty, forced migration—lie in adopting, improving, and scaling up organic and regenerative agriculture best practices.

The Regenerative Agriculture Solution starts with the story of how two brothers—Jose and Gilberto Flores—are at the leading edge of this approach, pioneering the use of the previously discarded leaves of the prodigious agave plant to regenerate agricultural soils, reduce erosion, and improve water capture.

When Ronnie Cummins, the cofounder of Organic Consumer Association (OCA) and Regeneration International, met the Flores brothers in 2019 and witnessed their revolutionary agave agroforestry system, he knew they were onto something important.

Cummins had spent decades studying the potential and pitfalls of organic and regenerative agriculture and knew best practices when he saw them. He started to write a book about Flores’s brother and other visionary people, such as Dr Vandana Shiva, Allan Savory, and John Liu, who started landscape-scale regeneration projects. The scientific data was even more convincing, suggesting that these projects—and others like it—could revolutionize how we understand the climate catastrophe.

Sadly, Cummins passed away in April 2023, in the midst of working on the book. Not to leave this work unfinished, Ronnie’s widow and OCA cofounder, Rose, called on their friend, colleague, and collaborator, Regeneration International’s cofounder André Leu, to complete the work and place the Flores brothers’ breakthroughs in the broader context of regenerative agriculture solutions to the world’s many interlocking ecological crises.

The result is The Regenerative Agriculture Solution, a book that shows how regenerating our forests, rangelands, and farming ecosystems can cool our planet, restore the climate, and enrich our communities.

You can also order the book directly from Chelsea Green Publishing.

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Critical Acclaim for The Regenerative Agriculture Solution:

“Read this book to understand why you should care about regenerative agriculture. Until the public is better-informed and insists on sweeping changes to current agricultural policy, which supports practices based on chemistry and technology rather than nature and biology, we will continue to degrade our planet and destabilize our climate. Leu and Cummins, through inspiring stories and solid science, show just how quickly we could turn that around.”

—Allan Savory, president, Savory Institute; chairman, Africa Centre for Holistic Management

“Ronnie Cummins’s work late in life at Vía Orgánica Ranch demonstrated that even in the driest of valleys in Mexico, farmers and herders can develop climate-resilient food production strategies that need not tax the soil, the aquifer, or the rural community, but enhance them. In my mind and heart, he is up there with Bill Mollison and Masanobu Fukuoka for shining a bright, warm light into our future on Planet Desert.”  

—Gary Paul Nabhan, James Beard Award–winning writer; desert agroecologist

“In the posthumously published The Regenerative Agriculture Solution, Ronnie Cummins offers a final gift: a dynamic model for using CAM (Crassulacean acid metabolism) plants to regenerate land, feed livestock, pull down carbon, and revive communities in hot, water-stressed areas. Why we hardly hear of CAM plants is a mystery; their alternate photosynthetic pathway is tailor-made to cope with the heat and aridity so many now face. Cummins tells the story of the Billion Agave Project, beginning with the enterprising brothers who devised a way to ferment the thick, spiky agave leaves for animal fodder, saving their farm in the process. Regeneration International’s André Leu situates the project within a growing wave of regional eco-restoration efforts—and shares how embracing and applying these efforts can bring us a long way toward ameliorating climate change. This is the book that Ronnie, an ‘incorrigible optimist’ and champion of farmers, would have wanted.”  

—Judith Schwartz, author of The Reindeer Chronicles and Cows Save the Planet

“If you are looking for a book of answers in a world of questions, confusion, and frustration on how to support climate resilience and human and planetary health, The Regenerative Agriculture Solution is for you. Its authors, Ronnie Cummins and André Leu, have been pioneers of the organic and regenerative agriculture movement since the 1970s—before it even was a movement. They are now sharing a lifetime of experience, careful thought, and research with their readers. The answer to our questions and our problems, as the authors explain, is beneath our feet: it is the soil we walk on but too often treat like dirt. The Regenerative Agriculture Solution is a book of hope, inspiration, and solid ideas for how we might focus on the principles of building soil health. If these principles are applied to even a small percent of the Earth, we start to heal our planet and reverse the climate chaos that surrounds us. This book is worth reading and sharing, and its ideas are worth implementing.”  

—Bob Quinn, president, Quinn Farm & Ranch; founder, Kamut International; director, Quinn Institute

​​​​​​​“For decades both Ronnie Cummins and André Leu have been leading advocates for global food systems to be natural, healthy, and ecologically sustainable. The words in The Regenerative Agriculture Solution emerge from their lives of action and service. It is hard to accept that Ronnie is no longer with us, but it is a joy to learn from this new iteration of his wisdom and experience. Great appreciation, too, is owed to André’s dedication to ensuring that his friend and colleague’s legacy continues to educate and inspire.”  

—John D. Liu, ecosystem ambassador, Commonland Foundation

​​​​​​​“This book is a testament to the vision of the late Ronnie Cummins. His friend André Leu memorializes Cummins’s lifelong work with this overview of the demonstrable benefits of regenerative agriculture for everything in the book’s subtitle and more. Cummins’s case study on agave illustrates these benefits perfectly, making this book a useful as well as touching tribute.”​

—Marion Nestle, professor emerita at NYU; author of Slow Cooked: An Unexpected Life in Food Politics

Listen to André Leu on the 'Down to Earth: The Planet to Plate Podcast', talking about the new book

 

Billion Agave Project:

For a great introduction to how this Billion Agave system works, watch this beautifully filmed trailer for The Billion Agave Project Documentary

Check out the Billion Agave Project page at Regeneration International

Please help us grow Regeneration International and the Billion Agave Project. We believe land resotration is one of the most hopeful, empowering solutions to addressing climate change, poverty, and regenerating the planet that exists today!

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In solidarity for health and wellness,

All of us at Regeneration International