By Regeneration International:

Help sustain your local farms this holiday season by supporting the food system you believe in!

Have you seen the Regenerative Farm Map? 

Find your local foods: pasture raised eggs, chicken and pork, grass fed beef, fruit, farm fresh cheese, pickles and yogurt, organic produce, herbs, jams, grains, organic, raw and A2 milk! 

The Regenerative Farm Map is a resource that was invented with a revolutionary idea at its heart: the idea that the regenerative movement has already spread across the whole world, and all we need to do to make it grow is connect people with their local regenerative farmers. 

This idea has proved to be true! And now we are asking you to help us grow the map even more!

We recently added the option to submit regenerative agriculture education centers to the farm map. 

Now we are asking that you help us find the regenerative agriculture education centers and regenerative farms in your area that we have not yet added to the Regenerative Farm Map.

Check out the Regenerative Farm Map and please add your favorite regenerative farm if you don’t already see it here  

Submit a Regenerative Farm or Regenerative Agriculture Education Center

By Dr. André Leu, Regeneration International Director:

“The evidence shows that agriculture needs to change from chemically intensive to biologically intensive. The new paradigm reduces and ultimately avoids the use of synthetic chemicals. Plant biology and living soil science must be at the forefront of this research.

A general rule is that the soil is covered with the maximum number of living plants for as long as possible during the growing season. Dead plants and bare soil do not photosynthesize, so the most productive regenerative systems avoid killing plants as weeds with herbicides and excessive tillage. Instead, plants are managed as cover crops to build soil fertility by maximizing root exudates. Various strategies are used to manage weeds and use them as cover crops to build fertility. Grazing is one of the most widespread management tools in these regenerative systems. (Leu 2021, Teague et al. 2016)


The best regenerative systems maximize photosynthesis to increase the capture of CO2 and store it in the soil as SOM through organic matter biomass and root exudates. A substantial body of evidence, starting in 1904, shows how root exudates feed organic carbon compounds to the soil microbiome, thereby increasing SOM. The key is to maximize photosynthesis to capture CO2 and convert it into numerous organic compounds.”

Read about examples of best practice regenerative systems and more

In Your Guide to Cellular Health, Dr. Mercola delves into the vital role of cellular energy in achieving optimal health and longevity. Drawing on the latest research, this comprehensive guide uncovers how modern lifestyle choices and environmental factors can impair mitochondrial function, leading to chronic diseases and premature aging.

Dr. Mercola provides actionable insights into diet, detoxification, and lifestyle adjustments that can enhance your overall well-being. With practical advice and easy-to-follow strategies, this book empowers you to take control of your health at the cellular level, helping you live a longer, healthier, and more vibrant life.

If you’re looking for ways to improve your quality of life, Your Guide to Cellular Health is an indispensable resource for anyone committed to taking charge of their health and vitality.

Order “Your Guide to Cellular Health” by Dr. Mercola

Sharon Lerner & Al Shaw report for ProPublica:

“In a world flush with hazardous air pollutants, there is one that causes far more cancer than any other, one that is so widespread that nobody in the United States is safe from it.

It is a chemical so pervasive that a new analysis by ProPublica found it exposes everyone to elevated risks of developing cancer no matter where they live. And perhaps most worrisome, it often poses the greatest risk in the one place people feel safest: inside their homes.

As the backbone of American commerce, formaldehyde is a workhorse in major sectors of the economy, preserving bodies in funeral homes, binding particleboards in furniture and serving as a building block in plastic. The risk isn’t just to the workers using it; formaldehyde threatens everyone as it pollutes the air we all breathe and leaks from products long after they enter our homes. It is virtually everywhere.

Federal regulators have known for more than four decades that formaldehyde is toxic, but their attempts to limit the chemical have been repeatedly thwarted by the many companies that rely on it.”

Learn why formaldehyde is key to so many lucrative industrial processes, and how companies that make and use it have spent lavishly on questioning and delaying government efforts to rein it in

Joseph R. Heckman writes for Cambridge University Press:

“In recent decades, a diverse community of dairy farmers, consumers and nutrition advocates has campaigned amidst considerable government opposition, to secure and expand the right of individuals to produce, sell and consume fresh unprocessed milk, commonly referred to as ‘raw milk’. This advocacy shares important parallels with battles fought in the organic food movement over the past century. Both the raw milk and organic food movements originated with farmers and consumers who sought to replace industrialized food production and processing practices with more traditional ones. Both movements equate the preservation of natural integrity in farming and food handling with more wholesome, nutritious food and environmental conservation. Both movements have had to work diligently to overcome a false perception that their practices are anachronistic, notably with regard to productive output of organic agriculture and the safety of fresh unprocessed milk.

There is also the failure of opponents to acknowledge a growing body of scientific evidence for health benefits associated with drinking of fresh unprocessed milk. The raw milk movement has the potential to economically benefit family farmers, much as organic agriculture has done. Building soil fertility, a foundational principle of organic farming, would benefit from having numerous small pasture-based dairies spread across the land providing fresh unprocessed milk. Agricultural universities and the Cooperative Extension System could seize a real leadership opportunity by promoting and participating in this reinvention of dairy farming, and restoring the ecology of this traditional food and farming system.

The absence of national standards for production of unpasteurized milk for direct human consumption inspired the founding of the Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI) by an organic dairy farmer (McAfee, Reference McAfee2011). Established in 2011, RAWMI mentors and trains producers of fresh unpasteurized milk. As described on its website, it ‘facilitates best practices in the raw milk industry through the evaluation of research findings’ and farm experience to create individualized food safety plans. Dairy farms that work with RAWMI adopt a set of standards; develop a risk assessment and management plan and safe operating procedures that are customized to the unique environment of the farm.”

Read about how the FDA plays up the risks and dismisses the benefits and much more

By Kenny Torrella, Vox:

“An overwhelming majority of Americans say they’re concerned about the treatment of animals raised for meat, and many believe they can help by simply selecting from one of the many brands that advertise their chicken or pork as “humane.” But such marketing claims have long borne little resemblance to the ugly reality of raising animals for meat.

Nearly all farmed animals in the US live on mega factory farms, where they’re mutilated without pain relief and fattened up in dark, overcrowded warehouses before being shipped off to the slaughterhouse. Only a tiny sliver of livestock are actually reared on the small, higher-welfare farms that many companies conjure on their packaging with quaint red barns and green rolling hills — and even those operations can be rife with animal suffering.

Over the summer, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) had an opportunity to fix the false advertising problem pervasive in the meat aisle when it published updated guidelines that companies must follow when making animal welfare claims on their labels. Instead, its new guidance barely changed anything.”

Read how misleading marketing — enabled by the USDA — tricks consumers

Check out the Regenerative Farm Map to find farms around the world that are working toward a humane regenerative future

Read “How to Buy (Good) Meat” from The Bittman Project

What the EPA, USDA, Big Ag, chemical, and food corporations are conveniently hiding from the public is that there’s no way to separate “U.S. agriculture” from our “food system” as a whole. Their faulty math (i.e. concealing food and farming emissions under the categories of transportation, manufacturing, etc.) is nothing but a smokescreen to hide the massive fossil fuel use and emissions currently belched out by our enormously wasteful, environmentally destructive, climate-destabilizing (and globalized) food system.

OCA is committed to building a movement of people who care about how their food is produced, to move beyond industrial agriculture, factory farms, agro-exports and highly-processed junk food to regenerating soils and forests and drawing down enough excess carbon from the atmosphere to re-stabilize our climate.

The time is ripe for change, help us keep up the momentum. Read André Leu’s inspiring article (featured above) to see how we really can change the climate though changing our agricultural practices, and help us with a donation if you can!

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

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

Considering a gift from your IRA?

Hannah Docter-Loeb writes for The Guardian:

“When Marco de Kat starts planning his meals, he doesn’t need to travel far for fresh food. Right outside his house is an 800 square metre plot with all sorts of produce – apples, pears, peppers, basil, beets and cauliflower, to name a few. During the winter months, he and his wife can pretty much survive off the vegetables stored in their freezer. Even after living in Oosterwold for a number of years, it’s something that still excites him.

‘Yesterday, I forgot to think about what to eat,’ he says. ‘You walk through your garden and you find something and that’s what you eat.’

Oosterwold, where de Kat has lived since 2017, is a 4,300 hectare (10,625 acre) urban experiment located east of Amsterdam, in a suburb of the city of Almere, where de Kat works as a municipal councillor. First visualised about a decade ago by a local network, it was established by local government and Oosterwold planners as a way to challenge the rigidity of Dutch city planning, giving people more freedom – and responsibility – over the urban design process.

The area, which has about 5,000 residents and a growing waiting list, is completely self-sufficient. Residents can build houses however they like, and must collaborate with others to figure out things such as street names, waste management, roads, and even schools. But the local government has included one extremely unusual requirement: about half of each plot must be devoted to urban agriculture.”

Read about how “nobody is doing it in the same way,” de Kat says. “You have to find your own recipe.”

By Marcia Brown, Grace Yarrow & Brittany Gibson, POLITICO:

“Kennedy has promised to take aim at the food and pharmaceutical industries in a Trump administration. Interest groups are already pushing back.

Trade groups representing farmers say they’re pushing the Trump campaign over concerns about Kennedy’s rhetoric on American agriculture. And lobbyists for packaged food companies and other major industry players are rushing to defend their use of additives and other ingredients under fire in the heat of the campaign.

The reaction to RFK Jr.’s agenda marks one of countless ways the business world is bracing for the possibility of a disruptive return of Trump. While many businesses achieved their aims during Trump’s first term, the latest rhetoric on the campaign trail is spurring a wave of concern about a more radical set of changes in a second Trump term.

Banning pesticides — not to mention food additives, seed oils or ultra-processed foods, as Kennedy has also advocated — would completely upend the existing U.S. food system. And if Trump truly lets Kennedy “go wild” on food and health, as he promised in remarks at a recent campaign rally, it would represent a 180 degree reversal from the agriculture agenda during his first term, which included rolling back pesticide restrictions and other food-related regulations.

Earlier this month, dozens of the country’s most prominent farm groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, sent a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture Committee expressing concern about “significant misunderstandings” about common farming practices such as the use of pesticides and GMOs and defending the “existing risk- and science-based regulatory frameworks for these technologies.”


Read how one Senate GOP aide said “I think Republicans are evenly divided about the Make America Healthy Again agenda. Some people, I think, see RFK as a total hack. … Certain [other] people are like, ‘Well, we think all of FDA is a crock of shit and we think it needs to be reformed from the inside out.’”

TAKE ACTION: Tell Trump’s New Team To Get Rid of These Five GMOs!

Nick Hedley, The Progress Playbook:

“Small patches of wildflowers in urban areas can be just as effective as natural meadows in nurturing pollinator populations, a Polish study has found.

Why it matters: Populations of bees and other pollinators have declined at a rapid rate over the past few decades due to habitat loss, the introduction of alien species, and pesticides, among other factors. Since the vast majority of the world’s crop production relies on pollinators, it’s a trend that must be urgently reversed, experts warn.

The latest: A cultivated small urban meadow has ‘a similar value for pollinators as larger areas of natural meadow,’ according to the study, which was published in the journal Ecological Entomology in October 2024 and was led by researchers at Warsaw University.

The researchers counted the number of wild bees, butterflies, and hoverflies in Warsaw’s sown meadows and natural ones, and found no difference in the composition of insect-pollinated plants between the two types of habitats, nor in the ‘species richness’ of pollinators.”

Read more

Find your native plant society

Elaine Mallon writes for The Washington Examiner:

“Synagro, a waste recycling company owned by Goldman Sachs, is lobbying Congress to shield the sludge manufacturer from being subjected to lawsuits over synthetic chemicals contaminating farmlands.

In 2022, the company created the Coalition of Recyclers of Residual Organics by Practitioners of Sustainability to lobby its interests to Congress. Leading the nonprofit group is Synagro CEO Bob Preston. Since its creation, the organization has spent $220,000 on federal lobbying, according to disclosure forms.

Lobbyists for Synagro argue that the company should not be held liable for the PFAS contamination in the sludge that it sold since it wasn’t the one who made it. PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are widely used synthetic chemicals that are dangerous to humans, animals, and the environment.

Sludge is created by filtering out water from sewage, which is then sold as inexpensive fertilizer.”

Read about how the contamination of PFAS in sewage sludge has been a known problem since the 1990s, but the government continues to promote sewage sludge as a safe option for fertilizer

TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Ban PFAS Pollution!

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola:

“STORY-AT-A-GLANCE

* Edible flowers are gaining popularity due to their nutritional and health benefits, containing bioactive compounds like carotenoids and phenolic compounds that offer antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties

* Many edible flowers are useful in bioremediation, helping to clean contaminated environments, which highlights their dual role in health and environmental sustainability

* The market for edible flowers is expanding as consumers seek foods with culinary appeal and health benefits, driving interest in their use in functional foods and natural remedies

* Safety is a key concern with edible flowers, as some contain toxic compounds; proper identification, preparation and consumption are necessary to maximize benefits and minimize risks

* Recent studies have analyzed the nutritional and phytochemical profiles of specific edible flowers, revealing unique compositions of vitamins, minerals and bioactive compounds that contribute to their health-promoting properties”

Read about how edible flowers have been cherished for centuries across various cultures, enhancing not only the appearance but also the flavor and aesthetic value of food

Neuroscience News reports:

“New research reveals that glyphosate, a widely used herbicide, can cause lasting brain inflammation and accelerate Alzheimer’s-like pathology in mice.
Even short-term exposure resulted in persistent inflammatory markers and neurological damage, including anxiety-like behaviors and premature death. The study found that glyphosate’s metabolite, aminomethylphosphonic acid, accumulates in brain tissue, raising concerns about its long-term safety for humans. 

Researchers stress the need for further investigation into glyphosate’s role in neurodegenerative diseases and its impact on public health. These findings challenge assumptions about the safety of glyphosate, highlighting its potential risks for brain health.
‘Our work contributes to the growing literature highlighting the brain’s vulnerability to glyphosate,’ Ramon Velazquez and his colleagues at the Translational Genomics Research Institute says.

‘Given the increasing incidence of cognitive decline in the aging population, particularly in rural communities where exposure to glyphosate is more common due to large-scale farming, there is an urgent need for more basic research on the effects of this herbicide.’”

Read how the findings suggest the brain may be much more susceptible to the damaging effects of the herbicide than previously thought

TAKE ACTION:
Make Your State the First to Ban Monsanto’s Roundup Weedkiller!

Read “Glyphosate in Food: Avoid These Contaminated Products” from ConsumerNotice.org

Research Shows More Than 150 Million Mental Diagnoses May Be Linked to Lead in Gasoline

Cities Are Using Sheep To Graze in Urban Landscapes and People Love It

A Black-Led Agricultural Community Takes Shape in Maryland

How RFK Jr. Could Reverse Our Nation’s Foolish Approach To Obesity

Scientists Sound Alarm About Terrifying Ocean Event That Could Bring Global Devastation

Forecasts Expert Technical Failure in Mexico-Eu GM Maize Panel

Fish Farming Industry is Using ‘Misleading’ Figures to Downplay its Role in Overfishing, New Research Finds

Fixing Food’s Big Climate Problem

Hey Democrats: We Should Work With RFK Jr. on Fixing America’s Food System

A Trade War Under Trump Would Bring Major Losses for California Agriculture, Experts Warn

Storm Darragh Showed Me How Unprepared My Family – And Britain – Are for Disaster

Babies in Europe Developing ‘Werewolf Syndrome’ After Exposure to Parents’ Hair-Loss Treatment

Truth In Food Labeling Would Reveal Hidden Harms To Biodiversity, Including Humans

Harvard Study: Eating Dark Chocolate Could Reduce Your Risk of Diabetes by 21%

A River in Washington State Now Has Enforceable Legal Rights