Today is World Food Day. 

It’s also a day when millions of people are cleaning up after yet another weather-related disaster, this time in Florida. And millions more around the globe are experiencing devastating droughts and crippling storms that are leaving them unable to grow food and feed their families.

TAKE ACTION: Today, on World Food Day, please ask your state leaders to follow the example of California and Hawaii by adopting food- and agriculture-focused strategies to address climate change.

We often think that we, as individuals, have little or no power to solve problems as complex and overwhelming as global warming and world hunger.

And yet, we do. The personal choices we make when it comes to our food, and the demands we make of our local, state and federal politicians to adopt climate change-reversing food, farming and and land-use policies give us the power to do something, everyday, to reverse our dangerous course.

Some states are already listening to their constituents who want better food and farming policies, and who also want their leaders to do something about climate change. 

California recently signed on to the 4 per 1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate. The 4p1000 Initiative is a bold policy initiative that has the power to restore both food and climate security.

Hawaii joined the 30X30 Forests, Food and Land Challenge. The 30X30 Challenge is based on the premise that food, farming and land-use goals can deliver 30 percent of the climate solutions needed by 2030 to tackle the climate crisis.

It’s a start. But we need all 50 states to get on board with policies that will make them “carbon neutral’—and that means moving aggressively to both slash emissions and draw down and sequester carbon.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just issued its most dire report yet. But along with the bad news, IPCC outlined a number of solutions for averting complete disaster. And Inside Climate News reports, one of the most promising of those solutions is to rethink how we grow food and use land.

The beauty of this solution is that it’s ready to go. We don’t need to wait for new technologies. We just have to adapt existing, tried-and-true practices, on a large scale.

We—as in consumers, policymakers, farmers and producers—can make this transition from degenerative agriculture to organic regenerative agriculture happen. If we act fast, act together and act boldly.

TAKE ACTION: Today, on World Food Day, please ask your state leaders to follow the example of California and Hawaii in implementing food- and agriculture-focused strategies to address climate change.

Let’s celebrate World Food Day together, by celebrating the solution to healthy people, a healthy environment, and healthy local communities. The solution lies in the soil!