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Farms, Food, Climate, and Our Will to Change

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The way we tend the land that produces our food, and the way we eat, are the key factors in our physical, moral, and spiritual survival and evolution.

My recognition of this fundamental fact is, of course, shared by many people. Among those who see this reality, and who can give the situation eloquent expression, is Jean-Paul Courtens of Roxbury Farm in Kinderhook, NY.

As it happens, CSA and biodynamic farmer Courtens has recently become a grandfather. He mentioned that happy fact publicly in March when he spoke at Dartmouth College as part of the Real Organic Project’s symposium. And then he dug deep into the subject.

A video of his 15-minute talk is available through my full blog on this topic at Mother Earth News. I recommend watching and learning…

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Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future ~ now available for pre-orders

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Deep Agroecology now available for pre-order
Publication date August 1, 2019

Cover by Angela Werneke, River Light Media.

As of today – Earth Day 2019 – my new book Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future is available for pre-order.

According with the spirit of Earth Day, we are publishing Deep Agroecology in service to the perennial ideals of healthy, and fulfilled lives for one and all on our home planet, Earth.

A quarter of a century ago, I had the privilege of serving as National Coordinator for Earth Day USA. I partnered with the Seventh Generation Fund to help bring the Council Circles project to hundreds of North American communities. This year I’m happy to mark the day with  announcement of a book that once again brings a council circle of wise voices together to offer native and agrarian wisdom ways forward for human beings and for our earth.

The way we tend the land that produces our food, and the way we eat, are the key factors in our physical, moral, and spiritual survival and development in this tumultuous era.

Elizabeth Wolf, my wife and partner, has played an indispensable role in bringing this book to life in a powerful and elegant way. I’ve dedicated the work to her, with love and appreciation.

EBOOK COPY – You may pre-order the eBook version of Deep Agroecology now at this link.  Please note that the actual publication and shipping date is August 1, 2019. 

SIGNED COPY – August 1 is also the publication date for the print edition. If you’d like to pre-order a copy of the print edition of Deep Agroecology personally inscribed to you by the author, please click on the Buy Now link below, which will take you to PayPal. The cost of the signed print book is $25 plus tax, inclusive of handling and shipping.

DEEP AGROECOLOGY
The ways we farm and the ways we eat
will determine the destiny of life on earth.
Agroecology is an ecological approach to growing food and fiber that views farms and orchards as ecosystems. Internationally, agroecology is increasingly recognized as an approach capable of meeting productivity goals while replenishing the soil, sequestering climate destabilizing CO2, and striving toward justice for all the human beings and animals in the food system.

Deep agroecology arises from recognition that the way we farm will determine the destiny of life on the earth. As a philosophy and as an approach, deep agroecology weaves the spiritual realities of planet earth into direct and balanced relationship with the physical realities. Deep agroecology is a natural, logical and necessary next evolutionary step, graced with an array of wholesome, leading-edge principles and practices.

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Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future

My book Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future is now available in both print and eBook editions.

A quarter of a century ago, I had the privilege of serving as National Coordinator for Earth Day USA. I partnered with the Seventh Generation Fund to help bring the Council Circles project and curriculum to hundreds of North American communities.

Now I’m happy to bring forward a book that again brings a council circle of wise voices together to offer native and agrarian wisdom ways forward for human beings and for our earth.

The way we tend the land that produces our food, and the way we eat, are the key factors in our physical, moral, and spiritual survival and development in this tumultuous era.

Elizabeth Wolf, my wife and partner, has played an indispensable role in bringing this book to life in a powerful and elegant way. I’ve dedicated the work to her, with love and appreciation. ~ S.M. 

Both the print and the eBook editions of  Deep Agroecology are now available through Amazon, and soon also through other sales outlets

DEEP AGROECOLOGY
The Ways We Farm and the Ways We Eat
Will Determine the Destiny of Life on Earth

Agroecology is an ecological approach to growing food and fiber that views farms and orchards as ecosystems. Internationally, agroecology is increasingly recognized as an approach capable of meeting productivity goals while replenishing the soil, sequestering climate destabilizing CO2, and striving toward justice for all the human beings and animals in the food system.

Deep agroecology arises from recognition that the way we farm will determine the destiny of life on the earth. As a philosophy and as an approach, deep agroecology weaves the spiritual realities of planet earth into direct and balanced relationship with the physical realities. Deep agroecology is a natural, logical and necessary next evolutionary step, graced with an array of wholesome, leading-edge principles and practices.

While deep agroecology is new territory, it’s natural territory, not just for farmers, but for all people. Farms are the foundation of our civilizations, and that foundation is undergoing massive upheaval. We must be about building a new agrarian foundation that can support in a healthy, spiritually intelligent way the high-tech, digital waves of culture sweeping so profoundly around the world.

Farms and farmers can build that foundation, but only with the intelligent involvement and active support of people and communities who depend upon them for survival.

Table of Contents for Deep Agroecology

Introduction
Chapter 1        Right Names
Chapter 2        Industrial Farms and Food
Chapter 3        Elements of Agroecology
Chapter 4        Webs of Light and Life
Chapter 5        Elements of Deep Agroecology
Chapter 6        This is the Holy Land
Chapter 7        Tierra Viva
Chapter 8        What Are Farms For?
Sources
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Selected Reviews

Endorsements
“Thank you, Steven McFadden, for rich and moving clarity, as you weave for us the many threads of ‘deep agroecology.’ The vision you capture is not a choice, for in this dire moment for our Earth, it is life’s only possibility forward.” ~ Frances Moore Lappé, author, Diet for a Small Planet and cofounder of Food First and the Small Planet Institute

“Deep Agroecology is an engaging encyclopedia of why ecological farming is the roadmap to human and planetary health. McFadden challenges us to work within the interconnectedness of all life. Concepts as far ranging as modern physics, microbiology, spirituality, and social networks are woven together, leaving the reader with a new world view. A must-read for students of the good food movement…It did change the way I perceive the world — in a way that didn’t leave me running for the hills (as the scientist in me often does when scientific and spiritual worlds merge).”  – Linley Dixon, Ph.D., Associate Director, The Real Organic Project

“Steven McFadden uses the words of farmers, scientists, philosophers, and indigenous elders to convey a deeper concept of agroecology that cannot be coopted by corporate agribusiness…The future of humanity depends on our heeding the wisdom of deep agroecology.” – John Ikerd, agricultural economist and author of Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture.

“First of all, let me just say that it is such a pleasure to read your writing, and I cannot say that about many people. You actually know how to write, which in truth means to pour spirit and meaning into earthly language. Everything I read was beautiful and felt true…This book is a little gem and very much needed right now.” – Robert Karp, former Director Practical Farmers of Iowa, and the Biodynamic Association

“Your many ideas are like lovely jewels, strung together.” – Alice Bennet-Groh, Temple-Wilton Community Farm

“A transformation of agriculture practices is essential for a sustainable future. In this well researched book Steven McFadden provides compelling information that is required reading for those invested in a better future for the planet and humanity.” –  John Thompson: Eco-psychologist and founder of The Nature Code

“Steven McFadden, in his Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food and Our Future, beckons the reader to wake up to the cries of our wounded planet and our suffering farms. If we cannot heal our farms, our civilization has no future. Steven offers a way forward, by blending indigenous agrarian wisdom with contemporary tools of sustainability. Deep Agroecoology implores us to put into action our love for the planet.” – John Peterson, The Real Dirt on Farmer John

Reviews of my other agrarian books

 Farms of Tomorrow: Community Supported Farms, Farm Supported Communities
by Trauger Groh and Steven McFadden

Resurgence Magazine on Farms of Tomorrow:  “It is rare to come across any practical farming guide that sets out, from its inception, a set of principles that embrace social, spiritual and economic concerns on completely equal terms…The wisdom and clarity of philosophy are striking throughout.”

Whole Earth Review on Farms of Tomorrow: “This is the best book to access the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement, including philosophical, spiritual, practical essays and how-to (including financial discussions). This is the source for tools, organizations, farms, and networks concerning the renewal of agriculture.”

The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century
“This book is just terrific…McFadden is dealing with sacred science, the sort of wisdom we require for our survival.”  —LARRY DOSSEY, M.D., author of Healing Words and The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things

“The Call of the Land provides an incredibly thorough guide for all who are interested in discovering or further understanding the changes taking shape across the country. In this surprisingly compact book, the author manages to assemble a meticulous overview of the people, places, and concepts in what he coins the ‘Agrarian Renewal.’ You will be amazed by the diversity and vision embodied in the movement so thoroughly and vividly described by Steven McFadden.” —ANA SOFIA JOANES, director of the film FRESH

“The Call of the Land is an important and timely primer on a resurgent agrarianism taking place around the nation. As the challenges of the 21st Century begin to bear down, we can take solace, and find pragmatic solutions, in the back-to-the-land work of progressive farmers, ranchers, conservationists, and many others. Hope dwells in the grassroots. This book is a great guide on where to look.”  — COURTNEY WHITE, Executive Director, the Quivira Coalition, author of Revolution on the Range: The Rise of a New Ranch in the American West

“The great value that The Call of the Land offers is the encouragement that comes from seeing what so many others are doing to revitalize America’s agrarian roots and branches…Steven McFadden has pointed the reader to hundreds of grassroots efforts to join, emulate or use as inspiration to plant our own gardens in whatever form makes the best sense for each of us. A hopeful work!”  – DEBORAH MADISON, author of Local Flavors, Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers Markets, and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

“In the face of widespread turmoil and resignation, The Call of the Land shows us that our hands, minds, and hearts, when used as one, are already healing ourselves and the planet earth. Author Steven McFadden reminds us that the seeds to a new future are being planted right now, that farms are meccas of cultural and ecological renewal, and that healthy agri-CULTURE is the sattvic incarnation of the Green Revolution. – FARMER JOHN PETERSON, Angelic Organics

“In this updated edition, Steven McFadden continues his significant work of identifying various agrarian projects where the vital link to nature is being restored. The Call of the Land serves as a valuable resource at a crucial, make-or-break juncture because there is just no ignoring Earth’s distress signals. “ – JULES DERVAES, Founder of the Urban Homesteading® Movement, Director of the film Homegrown Revolution

“We humans have lately entered into a collective techno-trance in which our primordial ties with land have been all but forgotten. Urban consumer lifestyles lead children to believe that food comes ultimately from the supermarket; that nature is merely something to be seen on dedicated cable channels. In reality, we are as dependent as ever on soil, water, weather, and biodiversity, even as we overuse, upset, and destroy these foundational elements of life. Steven McFadden helps us remember the essential, and points to the only sane path ahead–a profound emotional reconnection with the physical ground of being.” – RICHARD HEINBERG, Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon Institute, author of the Last Energy Crisis.

“It’s inspiring to read about all of the wonderful efforts Steven McFadden details in this book. With the dedication of Steven and all of us, we will achieve a future of healthful food, diverse farms and vibrant communities.” – TERESA OPHEIM, Executive Director, Practical Farmers of Iowa

“The Call of the Land will inspire you with page after page of innovative projects across the country that are having a positive impact on how we eat. Explore this comprehensive list of positive ideas and then implement them in your own community.” – INGRID KIRST, Community CROPS Executive Director, Lincoln, Nebraska

“McFadden’s call to action is clearly written and well referenced with a robust list of current websites and a bibliography for general reading on positive methods for resolving our food security challenge. Anyone interested in a good contemporary overview of challenges and solutions will find the book valuable.” —CHARLES FRANCIS, Director, Center for Sustainable Agricultural Systems, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

“The author has been a keen observer-participant of the agricultural scene for more than 30 years and has witnessed firsthand this revolution: those who grow and consume food are speedily awakening to the perils of industrialization of food production and finding new ways … to make ‘food with the farmer’s face on it’ the norm. With his research and interviews McFadden presents hundreds of new ideas and resources … all sound and all hopeful.” —WOODY WODRASKA, author of Deep Gardening

“McFadden has assembled a collection of information that promotes the growth of locally grown, sustainable food. The Call of the Land offers… a pathway toward a 21st-century paradigm shift that many feel will be necessary for sustainable, reliable, environmentally friendly food production in the future.” — CAROL EVANS LYNCH, Master Gardener, Nature’s Companion

“…Readers new to this movement sometimes struggle to identify a primer that is accessible and grounded in real-world examples. The Call of the Land lends itself as a tool for such readers, as it not only illustrates a foundational agrarian ethos historically argued by Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson, but it also outlines a variety of practical models and approaches to inform the practice of local food system development. — KIM L. NIEWOLNY and NANCY K. FRANZ, Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development

 Farms of Tomorrow: Community Supported Farms, Farm Supported Communities

by Trauger Groh and Steven McFadden

A future where we all become part of the farm organism: “The concepts of community supported agriculture (CSA) grab at the imagination: reconnect with the land and farmer, know exactly where your food is coming from, work toward self-sufficiency. Such a utopian vision clashes gloriously with the disconnected, “cocooning” lifestyle of many people.

“This textbook for the CSA movement, first published in 1990 and “revisited” in this volume published in 1997, lays out the philosophies and actions that brought CSAs into our awareness today. You might know a CSA farmer, and perhaps even are a CSA member. But unless you’re the farmer herself, or on an advisory board for a CSA, you probably have not considered many of the philosophical questions.
In half-a-dozen essays comprising a third of the book, questions are explored such as: Should farmers or the CSA own the land? How should farmers’ retirement be arranged? Should animals be part of the farm, and should meat be part of the CSA shares?

“Three basic rules of such holistic farming are offered: 1. Do not work too many hours (leave time for observation, reflection and meditation). 2. Buy for the farm as little as possible from the outside world. 3. Take all the initiative for your actions on the farm out of the realm of the spirit, not out of the realm of money.

“The book talks of creating an “associative economy” and a “parallel polis” that look at society differently. One premise is that the farm should be supported by the entire community, and the risk shared equally by all consumers. Another is that farmland should not be a market commodity.

“Part of the book consists of essays by CSA farmers on their own operations; many were written for the first volume and updated, so the trials of time can be seen. The final section contains blueprints for operating a CSA: how to get started, and how to buy and hold land. Samples from farms show budgets, marketing materials and typical share content. From philosophy to examples, Farms of Tomorrow Revisited shows us where the CSA concept could take society, and the movement’s limitations, especially in solving current agriculture issues.” – Bill T.

 

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Awakening to Agroecology

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At first the word agroecology hits the human ear with the dull thud of a complex, intellectual abstraction. But in truth it’s a term describing an approach to farms, food, and life that is real, urgent, positive, earth-based, science-informed, and altogether of the heart. We need agroecology now, and we need it on neighborhood, heartland, and planetary scales.

In the universe of ideals for farms and food, agroecology has in recent decades captured international attention. Now it’s becoming better appreciated in North America. Now it stands out as a range of essential, broad, and wise pathways forward for humanity…

The rest of my blog post is available at Mother Earth News.

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Revolution Underway for Organic Farms and Food

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“The beginning of wisdom
is to call things by their right names.”
– Confucius

Thanks to the convenience of the Internet, I got to watch Dave Chapman’s riveting on organic farms and food. He spoke on the topic with restrained passion earlier this month at a symposium held at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. A few days later sitting at my computer in New Mexico, I heard his message loud and clear. It matched what I know from my own observations, and he added depth of understanding: there is revolution afoot in the realm of organic farms and food.

The foods being labeled and sold as organic in America are under enormous pressure in the marketplace. Chapman, associate director of The Real Organic Project (ROP), said that people have discovered that there can be a lot of money in organics. By now it’s a $50 billion industry. “We are cursed by our own success,” Chapman commented. “The money is like blood in the water.”

…The rest of my blog post is freely available at

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The Marvelous Million Hazelnut Campaign

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Imagine the vast GMO-glyphosate soybean fields of America’s Heartland transformed into a perennial forest with swarms of hazelnut trees, deeply-rooted and thick as lilac bushes, fourteen feet tall, and laden heavy with oil-rich nuts that have a 101 uses.

Imagine the annual harvest of hazelnuts fulfilling a cornucopia of needs: for animal feed, for cooking oil, for fuel, for human food – and for many of the purposes and functions now fulfilled by soy.

How different the landscape. How changed the land itself, and all the creatures which share life upon the land. How profoundly different the environmental impact.

Chris Gamer of Minnesota and his allied visionaries have imagined all that. And after having imagined it, they’ve set about working to make the vision real via The Million Hazelnut Campaign…
…
…The rest of my blog on the Million Hazelnut Campaign is at this link on .

 

 

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Do Not Hit the Snooze Button – Earth Changes and Local Food

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As of this month I have again started blogging for Mother Earth News, the original guide to living wisely upon the earth. It’s good to be back after having turned my attention to book writing for the last couple of years. There’s lots to blog about.

My first blog for Mother is titled Do Not Hit the Snooze Button. It’s about the thousands of wake-up calls that scientists, environmentalists, and nature itself have been ringing out for the last several decades. That ringing is deafening right now, as detailed in the blog. “As scientists from NASA, NOAA, and the UN worded it in January 2019, “We’re no longer talking about a situation where global warming is something in the future. It’s here. It’s now.”

In the context of our turbulent reality, the blog post points out that the sustainable and local food movements are keenly shrewd and resourceful responses that need to be scaled up massively now. The threat that links all these positive, proactive responses are agroecology and deep agroecology.  You can read my blog for Mother Earth News here.

Much more to come…

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Extreme Weather & Food Shocks Compel Climate-Emergency Plans

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At this point most of us need look no further than outside our windows to see that climate change is upon us. For me in New Mexico, the alarming sight of a neighborhood emergency out the window came last summer in late July. That’s when a “thousand-year storm” ripped up our yard, overflowed the arroyos, inundated the basement of Santa Fe’s city hall, and washed-out streets around the region. The storm swamped gardens and farm plots aplenty.

From polar vortexes and churning tornados, to the relentless string of hurricanes, floods, and forest conflagrations, the earth changes of climate chaos are raging. To ignore this rampant reality, and to do nothing about it, is to invite peril.

As NASA and NOAA scientists put it this past week, “We’re no longer talking about a situation where global warming is something in the future. It’s here. It’s now.”

In this context, food production is increasingly susceptible to extreme climate and weather events, according to researchers publishing in the journal Nature Sustainability  (January, 2019). They report that the intensifying scale of weather disasters worldwide is related to climate change, and is having a steady, unsettling impact on global food systems and markets. Extreme events are slamming home repeatedly on land and sea.

Consider the news from just the last week:

Five Straight Record-breaking Hot Years – Scientists at NASA reported that the Earth’s average surface temperature in 2018 was the fourth highest in nearly 140 years of record-keeping and a continuation of an unmistakable warming trend. The data confirms the fact that the five warmest years in recorded history have been the last five. Further, 18 of the 19 warmest years have occurred since 2001.

Gigantic Hole in Antarctica – A colossal cavity 2/3 the size of Manhattan has been discovered growing in Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, signaling rapid ice decay. Shocking the scientists who discovered it, the huge hole was found growing at an “explosive rate” according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Ice Shelf Tearing Apart – Also in Antarctica, the Brunt Ice Shelf is tearing itself apart and could create an iceberg the size of Delaware. Scientists say that will happen soon.

Himalayas Melting – At least a third of the ice in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush will thaw this century as temperatures rise, disrupting river flows vital for growing crops from China to India, for about 1.65 billion human beings.

URGENT WAKE UP CALL
In recognition of the reality that climate change is underway now and already affecting billions of people across the globe, the Club of Rome has sounded an “urgent wake up call,” and published a global Climate Emergency Plan.

Based on their studies, the Club of Rome recognizes that climate change is the most pressing global challenge of our era, a force that constitutes an existential threat to humanity. To avoid further collapse of environmental, economic, social, and political systems, their plan sets out 10 priority actions, such as transforming energy systems, scaling-up technology, and reckoning with overpopulation. Finally, at number 8 on their list, they sound a call for acceleration of “regenerative land use policies.” For farms and food, the principal way they recommend for responding to their urgent call is to “adopt the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) recommendations for 100% Climate Smart Agriculture  (CSA).” That is a critically weak, inadequate, and flawed recommendation.

According to the FAO, climate-smart agriculture is an approach that helps to reorient agriculture to support development and ensure food security in a changing climate. This is an approach widely embraced by multinational industrial ag and chemical corporations, but widely criticized otherwise. In September 2015, for example, more than 350 civil society organizations called on national and international decision makers to reject “the dangerous rhetoric of climate smart agriculture.”

While corporate CSA sounds promising, the civil society groups argued, it’s actually greenwashing. Corporate CSA lacks social and environmental safeguards, and fails to prioritize farmers’ voices, knowledge, and rights. It should not be confused with agroecology, which is a global movement toward clean, holistic agriculture, based on principles of ecology, food security, food sovereignty, and food justice.

Long before corporate “CSA” co-opted the acronym, CSA was well-known in agricultural circles as standing for Community Supported Agriculture. That CSA – the original CSA – is but one example of real agroecology. Even in the face of multinational corporate dominance, true agroecological initiatives are continuing to proliferate around the world because strengthening resilience against food shocks by enhancing local food security is not just common sense, it is an imperative requirement of our era.

DEEPLY ROOTED SOUL MOVEMENT
Right now in America and around the world millions of people are actively pursuing many thousands of agroecological pathways forward, from food coops and real CSA farms, to the manifold permutations of urban agriculture, Transition Towns, and countless other creative endeavors to build clean and just local economies, and clean, just local food systems. In the light of climate change realities, millions more of these initiatives are required.

As Gary Nabhan expressed it in the context of his new book Food from the Radical Center, the good food movement is not just an idea. It’s a “deeply rooted soul force at work from coast to coast and north to south.” The Good Food-Local Food movement – whether locally anchored in a CSA, a co-op, a farmers market, or some other form – is civic responsibility driven by acutely realistic economic, environmental, and health concerns.

These agroecological initiatives are some of the pathways I strove to map out in earlier books, such as The Call of the Land, and Awakening Community Intelligence: CSA Farms as 21st Century Cornerstones.

In the first book on the original CSA, Farms of Tomorrow, my co-author Trauger Groh made an eloquent argument. Farming, he reasoned, is not just a business like any other profit-making business, but rather a precondition of all human life on earth, and thus a precondition of all economic activity. “As such,” we emphasized in the book, “farming is everyone’s responsibility, and has likewise to be accessible for everyone. The problems of agriculture and the environment belong not just to farmers, but are the common problems of all people.”

That’s the call to action that I, and thousands of other people, are sounding in the hope that many millions of people, even billions of people, will see and will recognize what is happening, and then take swift, powerful, intelligent, and strategic action through households, communities, and nations to build food security and thereby also help mitigate the unfolding pattern of climate change.

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Double Stab by The Lancet pierces illusions about Farms, Food, Climate

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The esteemed British medical journal The Lancet has released two commission reports emphasizing the pivotal role that farms and food play in deteriorating human and environmental health, as well as in the mounting chaos of climate change.

So dire is our current state, the reports argue, that our ongoing survival and welfare as we live on earth requires a radical transformation of the farm and food systems. It will take mass public interest, activity, and direct support to make that happen.

The commissions warned explicitly that this essential transformation will require that consumers demand and pay for food that is raised and distributed in new ways. What you choose to eat, and the way your food is grown, have a direct impact on personal and global health. Our individual choices collectively create the rapidly deteriorating condition of our public health and the earth environment that sustains us. Those are not opinions or illusions, but rather scientific realities which are once again substantiated in these two commission studies.

The two Lancet commission reports were published separately in January, 2019. The first report, Food in the Anthropocene, was authored by 37 scientists from around the world, the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems. The second report was titled The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition and Climate Change: The Lancet Commission Report. That commission report was researched and written by 26 experts from 14 countries.

According to The Global Syndemic report, human beings are actively under threat from three global pandemics, all of them directly linked to the way we eat. Through their operations ‘Big Ag & Food’ corporations are driving global epidemics in obesity, undernutrition, and climate change. All of them threaten human beings. But their interactions create a hazardous impact greater than the sum of one, or two, or more afflictions. In combination, the three pandemics establish a global syndemic. That’s a set of linked health problems involving two or more afflictions that interact synergistically to drive conditions into a danger zone.

The researchers noted that ‘Big Food’ companies, driven by profit and heedless economic expansion, are through their actions inciting this syndemic. Industrial farm operations drive greenhouse gas omissions; meanwhile, paradoxically, people around the world are stricken by undernutrition, obesity, and a host of other diet and environment-related diseases.

The syndemic commission found that pandemics of malnutrition and obesity interact with climate change in a feedback loop. Together they represent an existential threat to humans and the planet. The modern western diet, they wrote, has become highly damaging, and needs a complete overhaul if we are to avoid ecological catastrophe. We need to cut global meat consumption in half, and more than double the volume of whole grains, pulses, nuts, fruit and vegetables we eat, according to the commission.

In conclusion, the syndemic commission report noted that the evidence that our diets are the largest cause of climate change and biodiversity loss is now overwhelming.

Strongest Lever
Meanwhile, also in the month of January, 2019, the 37 scientists of the separate EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems in 2019 authored their landmark publication, Food in the Anthropocene. These scientists concluded that food is the single strongest lever to improve human health and environmental sustainability.

Food systems have potential to dramatically increase environmental sustainability, they wrote, and to nurture and to improve human health. Our current food systems, however, are fouling ecosystems, and accentuating climate change. Overall the food system is the single largest driver of environmental degradation.

Further, as the commission reported, unhealthy diets now pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than unsafe sex, alcohol, drug, and tobacco use combined. Thus, an immense challenge facing humanity is to provide a growing world population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems. The Food in the Antropocene commission called for a radical transformation of the global food system. Individual action won’t be enough. We need to act as individuals, and then also actively cooperate on community, national, and global approaches and systems.

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