The Organic Consumers Association is pleased to announce the appointment of Ercilia Sahores as our new International Director! Please join us in welcoming this committed and charismatic leader as we move forward to carry on our own and Ronnie’s vision for a more organic, regenerative world. We look forward to the many talents and verve that this truly international connector brings as she moves up in our organization to take on her new position as our International Director.

A bit about Ercilia:

Ercilia Sahores, born in Argentina in 1980, was raised in Southern Argentina amid trees, mountains, books, many friends, a loving family, and beehives. When she turned 17, Ercilia moved to Buenos Aires where she graduated with a degree in Political Sciences and International Relations from the Catholic University of Argentina and the University of Buenos Aires.

She was very active in student centers and became involved in self-organized neighborhood committees during and after the harsh times of the December 2001 protests. While in Buenos Aires, Ercilia worked as a translator and professor of cultural studies and local development. She was also assistant professor of Sociology at the school of Political Sciences.

In 2004, Ercilia decided to pack her backpack and head to the United States to start a journey that would eventually take her through Mexico and Cuba. While in the U.S. she lived through hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and learned first-hand about inequalities and civil rights movements in the States.

Read more about our new International Director here

From Dr. Vandana Shiva, and RI international director Dr. André Leu:

Regeneration International’s friends and affiliates, Compassion in World Farming and  IPES-Food, hosted the Extinction or Regeneration conference in the heart of London at the Queen Elizabeth II Center in Westminster on May 11th and 12th, 2023. 

This gathering provided a platform for experts across the globe to share solutions for how we can transform our food and farming systems for better human, animal, and planetary health via a whole food systems approach to providing sufficient nutritious food for an expanding world population while remaining within the safe operating space of all nine planetary boundaries while protecting wild and domestic animals and restoring soils, oceans, forests, and biodiversity.

Watch this presentation by Regeneration International’s Steering Committee, Dr. Vandana Shiva, and international director Dr. André Leu to hear their message on the importance of reclaiming our movement’s language from corporate takeover.  

A big thanks to the two thousand of you who took the time to write to the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) about Apeel, the mysterious fruit coating backed by Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum.

You got results!

OMRI responded with a statement that the use of Apeel’s Organipeel as a fruit coating “could be out of USDA organic compliance.”

OMRI says it never approved Organipeel for use as a fruit coating.

“[A]ny product that is OMRI Listed® as a fruit coating needs to contain only ingredients that are not restricted on the USDA National List, and agricultural ingredients that are organically produced,” wrote OMRI Marketing Manager Roger Plant.

Organipeel’s active ingredient is citric acid, but that’s only 0.66 percent of the product. Apeel doesn’t reveal what’s in the other 99.34 percent. There’s no way it could “contain only ingredients that are not restricted on the USDA National List, and agricultural ingredients that are organically produced.”

Starr Ranch Growers was the only organic brand we knew of that was using Organipeel. As soon as your emails and Facebook comments started arriving, they removed all evidence of it from their website and told everyone who asked, “No we do NOT use Apeel products on any of our products.”

Thanks to your tips, we’ve learned that Stemilt’s Artisan Organics is also using Organipeel on apples.

How long will it take for them to quit?

TAKE ACTION: Tell Stemilt’s Artisan Organics to stop coating its apples with Apeel’s Organipeel!

WATCH: OMRI: Apeel “Could Be Out of USDA Organic Compliance”

Comment on Apeel’s Stemilt Twitter thread.

This page lists hundreds of local organizations – planting public orchards and food forests, picking otherwise-wasted fruits and vegetables from city trees and farmers’ fields, and sharing with neighbors and the needy.

“Falling Fruit is a celebration of the overlooked culinary bounty of our city streets. By quantifying this resource on an interactive map, we hope to facilitate intimate connections between people, food, and the natural organisms growing in our neighborhoods. Not just a free lunch! Foraging in the 21st century is an opportunity for urban exploration, to fight the scourge of stained sidewalks, and to reconnect with the botanical origins of food.

Our edible map is not the first of its kind, but it aspires to be the world’s most comprehensive. While our users contribute locations of their own, we comb the internet for pre-existing knowledge, seeking to unite the efforts of foragers, foresters, and freegans everywhere. The imported datasets range from small neighborhood foraging maps to vast professionally-compiled tree inventories. This so far amounts to 3,193 different types of edibles (most, but not all, plant species) distributed over 1,496,201 locations. Beyond the cultivated and commonplace to the exotic flavors of foreign plants and long-forgotten native plants, foraging in your neighborhood is a journey through time and across cultures.

Join us in celebrating hyper-local food! The map is open for anyone to edit, the database can be downloaded with just one click, and the code is open-source.” 

Find the Fallen Fruit map here

From Nexus Media News via Eco Watch:

“In a silvopasture setup, farmers carefully manage each element to benefit the other — relying on manure to fertilize trees, for example, or fallen fruit to feed the livestock — resulting in a system that’s greater than the sum of its parts. 

It’s an old idea that’s gaining modern traction. Last year, the USDA awarded the Nature Conservancy and multiple partner organizations a $64 million grant to advance agroforestry — the umbrella term for agricultural practices that incorporate trees — by providing technical and financial assistance to farmers looking to make the switch. This year’s Farm Bill could mean another infusion of funding as well as the expansion of existing agroforestry programs to more explicitly include silvopasture. 

But a silvopasture system can do more than simply save farmers money; it can help them diversify what they grow. Perhaps one of the oldest — and most profitable — examples of silvopasture is the dehesa system of southern Spain, where Ibérico pigs wander among towering oak trees, feasting on acorns and fertilizing the soil, resulting in some of the world’s most expensive ham and a cash crop of cork.”

Learn more about the promise of this farming method that works in tandem with nature

Take Action to Ban Factory Farms!

Unfortunately, both Democratic and Republican politicians in the U.S. appear to have lost touch with reality and the needs of everyday working class, middle class, low-income, and rural communities. America’s political duopoly appears hell-bent on demonizing “the other party” for partisan gain meanwhile working full-time for their respective donors in the billionaire class, with their primary paymasters coming from corporate agribusiness, Big Pharma, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the fossil fuels industry, and the military-industrial complex.

With Establishment Democrats and Republicans continuing to discredit themselves, Trumpers and Progressives alike, it’s time for a new grassroots rising. It’s time for a game-changing grassroots-powered politics based upon Regeneration, rather than “business as usual” and “politics as usual.”

OCA and our allies believe that a global awakening and Grassroots Rising, based upon the principles and practices of regenerative food, farming, and land-use, has the awesome potential to inspire and provoke a multi-partisan, multinational, populist Movement—Democrat, Independent, and Republican; liberal, radical, conservative, and libertarian; rancher, farmer, and indigenous; urban and rural; consumer and farmer; North and South.

Read more: USA: A Cry for Regeneration

OCA, Regeneration International, and Hudson Carbon are currently working on a grassroots-powered global campaign to help make the best practices of organic and regenerative food, farming, land use, and health the norm, rather than just the alternative. While defending ourselves and our communities from the now daily assaults of a global cabal—WEF, Bill Gates, Monsanto/Bayer and the Poison Cartel, Big Pharma, indentured gene engineers, bioweapons scientists, and militarists engaged in “Russian Roulette,” we are committed to keeping our eyes on the prize. In these troubled times, we pledge to stop the madness and build a new organic commonwealth on the ruins of the old.

Among our most important tasks are to strengthen local-to-global farmer, consumer, and natural health networks; unite the organic and grass-fed/pasture raised-movements; identify and publicize the best organic and regenerative farming and grazing practices that can be scaled up; and, last but not least, find additional funding and support to improve and expand our alternative food and agriculture system.

As partisans in the organic movement we are proud of creating a massive global network of producers and consumers for organic foods and products. But, in the face of a life or death crisis, we are expanding our ranks, market share, and acreage far too slowly. Meanwhile most small, indigenous, and disadvantaged farmers and low-income consumers are still being marginalized or left behind.

We need your help and participation to not only safeguard the integrity of organics, but, over the next decade, to make Organic and Regenerative food, farming, land use, and health the norm, not just the alternative.

If you can afford it, please make a donation today.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Support Citizens Regeneration Lobby, OCA’s 501(c)(4) lobbying arm (not tax-deductible)

Make a tax-deductible donation to Regeneration International, our international sister organization

Click here for more ways to support our work

Thank you to our 300,000 email subscribers and two million social media followers (OCA, Millions Against Monsanto, Regeneration International, Via Organica) who forward and share our information with friends and contacts.

Please tell everyone you know to sign up for the free Organic Bytes weekly newsletter, and the monthly newsletter of Regeneration International.

By Bhavana Kunkalikar, News Medical:

Physical and environmental health, as well as safety and security, learning and social relationships, and access to quality care, can impact brain health. Maintaining optimal brain health is crucial for tackling contemporary societal issues, such as the adverse impacts of the food industry on communities, and promoting innovation.

Various environmental factors have been shown to influence brain health, some of which include nutrition and exposure to toxins or pollutants present in food, medication, water, or air. Although the global food industry has expanded to meet growing population demands, it is responsible for up to one-third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 70% of freshwater withdrawals, all the while remaining a major source of both single-use plastic production and pollution. Furthermore, this industry is a primary contributor to global deforestation and biodiversity loss.

Find out more about how these findings can translate into changes that can improve treatment outcomes

Rob Stein, NPR News reports:

“In theory, you could reproduce with yourself.” —Paula Amato

“Researchers are inching closer to mass-producing eggs and sperm in the lab from ordinary human cells. The technique could provide new ways to treat infertility but also open a Pandora’s box.

We are close to a revolution in the way that human beings reproduce. Scientists are near creating human eggs and sperm in the lab with any one person’s genes. What does that mean for humanity?”

Read more: Scientists Near a Breakthrough That Could Revolutionize Human Reproduction 

Feds Abandon Safety Assessments of Gene-Edited Seed and Food

Noam Chomsky on Why This Is the Most Dangerous Point in Human History

Check Your Wine – These 30 Brands Have High Levels Of Cancer-Causing Arsenic & Glyphosate

How Sustainable Agriculture Can Combat Drought and Creates Resilient Food Systems

Dutch Government To Hold 3M Liable for ‘Forever Chemicals’ Damage

Linoleic Acid — The Most Destructive Ingredient in Your Diet

Black Farmers Struggle in Face of Structural Racism and Economic Headwinds

7 Sustainability Benefits of HempWool Insulation

Water Is a Human Right. Let’s Create a Society That Affirms This.

Everyone Should Know How To Make a Quick Pickle