Is it possible that the solution to the global climate emergency lies in a “waste” agricultural product? Two brothers from a small town in Mexico are proving just that.
The best-kept secret in the world today is that solutions to some of our most pressing issues—food insecurity, deforestation, overgrazing, water scarcity, rural poverty, forced migration—lies in adopting, improving, and scaling up organic and regenerative agriculture best practices.
The Regenerative Agriculture Solution tells 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. Amazingly, their methods also benefit their local economy, creating jobs by producing an inexpensive livestock feed supplement that could grow into a multi-billion-dollar industry and change the face of agriculture, animal husbandry, ecosystem restoration, and climate change forever.
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. The scientific data was even more convincing, suggesting that the project—and others like it—could revolutionize the way we understand the climate catastrophe.
Sadly, Cummins passed away in April 2023, in the midst of working on a book that told the Flores brothers’ extraordinary story. 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 Regenerative Agriculture Solution is an agricultural, agroforestry, and public policy blueprint, as well as a call to action for organic and regenerative farmers, ranchers, and land managers around the world. It is also a call to action for consumers, policy leaders, organic and sustainable development advocates, corporations, and investors to address the climate, health, and environmental crises as well as rural poverty.
About the author
Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, a leader in the International Forum on Globalisation, and of the Slow Food Movement. Director of Navdanya and of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and a tireless crusader for farmers’, peasants’, and women’s rights, she is the author and editor of a score of influential books, among them Oneness vs. the 1%; Making Peace with the Earth; Soil Not Oil; Globalization’s New Wars; Seed Sovereignty, Food Security: Women in the Vanguard; and Who Really Feeds the World?
Shiva is the recipient of over twenty international awards, including the Right Livelihood Award (1993); the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic (1998); the Horizon 3000 Award (Austria, 2001); the John Lennon-Yoko Ono Grant for Peace (2008); the Save the World Award (2009); the Sydney Peace Prize (2010); the Calgary Peace Prize (2011); and the Thomas Merton Award (2011). She was the Fukuoka Grand Prize Laureate in 2012.
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