‘The Regenerative Agriculture Solution’: A Book of Hope
In her foreword to “The Regenerative Agriculture Solution,” environmental activist and food sovereignty advocate Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., discusses her relationship with the authors, Ronnie Cummins and André Leu, and why the book offers hope for the organic regenerative food movement.
I am happy to be writing this foreword to a book about regenerative agriculture — not only because I believe that regenerative agriculture offers a solution to so many of the world’s problems, but also because this particular book was started by my friend and longtime collaborator, Ronnie Cummins, and completed by my other friend and longtime collaborator, André Leu, after Ronnie passed away in April 2023.
The book also came into being thanks in no small part to the efforts of another friend, Rose Welch, Ronnie’s widow and cofounder (with him) of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA).
Like the book itself, this foreword is a tribute to Ronnie — and his decades-long dedication to organic agriculture, environmental activism, and real, healthy food — as well as a celebration of the long friendship we all enjoyed.
It is also a call to carry on the work.
“Regeneration” was not a commonly used word prior to 2014, when a handful of activists — me, Ronnie, and André, as well as Dr. Hans Herren from the Millennium Institute and Steve Rye from Mercola — met in New York at the Rodale headquarters to find ways to strengthen our movement and deepen the convergence between ecological sustainability and social justice in times of climate havoc.
The following year, we gathered again, this time at a biodynamic farm in Costa Rica, and formally launched Regeneration International. Ronnie was instrumental in making it happen.
I’d known Ronnie since 1988, when we met in Washington, D.C., at a meeting on climate change. We were together in Rome in 1996 at the U.N. Food Summit, where we dreamed up an annual “fortnight of action,” which would take place every year from October 2nd (Gandhi’s birthday) to October 16th, World Food Day.
The idea was to keep the movement energized by making it an annual event. As of 2024, the tradition continues.
At the 2015 Climate Summit in Paris, we planted a Garden of Hope and made a “Pact with the Planet” to regenerate the Earth. It was then that we also cooked up the idea of staging an international tribunal at the Hague to try Monsanto for its crimes against the Earth and its people.
Ronnie and André again played a major role. Ronnie also founded the Millions Against Monsanto Campaign. Through the years, we continued to work together, united by a passion for truth, a commitment to care, and the urge to cooperate and share our knowledge and resources.
We were also united as farmers, in farming and caring for the land through regeneration. Our scientific efforts have always rested on a foundation of practical activities — they grow from doing.
Knowledge and action are a continuum, flowing from the living systems and processes of the living Earth. As André summarizes here in these pages:
“Regeneration International asserts that to heal our planet, all agricultural systems should be regenerative, organic, and based on the science of agroecology. Farmers can determine acceptable and regenerative practices using . . . [the] Four Principles of Organic Agriculture. These principles are:
1. Health. Organic agriculture should sustain and enhance the health of soil, plant, animal, human, and the planet as one and indivisible.
2. Ecology. Organic agriculture should be based on living ecological systems and cycles, work with them, emulate them, and help sustain them.
3. Fairness. Organic agriculture should build on relationships that ensure fairness in the familiar environment and life opportunities.
4. Care. Organic agriculture should be managed in a precautionary and responsible manner to protect the health and well-being of current and future generations and the environment.”
This book, “The Regenerative Agriculture Solution: A Revolutionary Approach to Building Soil, Creating Climate Resilience, and Supporting Human and Planetary Health,” distills the knowledge gained over decades of collective work — and shows the many interconnections of living systems.
As André puts it:
“Plants, through photosynthesis, use solar energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into glucose. Glucose is the basis of the food system for most of life. It is a primary energy source of the cells of most living organisms, including plants and animals. It is the basis of the fuels that power the mitochondria—the engines inside the cells of nearly every organism on Earth, including us.”
This perspective helps us see through false solutions to climate change, such as carbon offsets, geoengineering, biofuels, and renewable energy based on the mining of lithium and cobalt. It also clarifies the real solutions that find their foundational principles in the biosphere, in living soil, and in justice and fairness among people and all living organisms.
Understanding this distinction is essential to the future health of the planet and its inhabitants. For example, carbon offsets allow polluters to continue polluting while gaining access to the resources of non-polluters. The more honest, fair, and ecological solution is “the polluter pays.”
As André argues, “Instead of trading carbon as a commodity on financial markets, polluters should be required to remunerate the people who are actually doing the work of regenerating the climate and environment.”
It is in this spirit — a commitment to honoring and rewarding those who are doing the difficult work of regenerating the planet — that this book is published. It identifies the degenerative practices of corporate industrial agriculture trying to cloak itself as “regenerative” while also describing the principles of real regeneration, drawn from how living systems work, grow, and heal.
Regenerative agriculture is an ecological solution to climate change. The book shows how regenerating our forests, rangelands, and farming ecosystems can cool our planet, restore the climate, and enrich our communities.
It is a book of hope based in knowledge and practice.
Read it. Practice the principles of regeneration. Grow life. Grow hope.
Published with permission from the authors of “The Regenerative Agriculture Solution: A Revolutionary Approach to Building Soil, Creating Climate Resilience, and Supporting Human and Planetary Health.”
