My new book – Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future – will be published August 1, 2019
Double Stab by The Lancet pierces illusions about Farms, Food, Climate
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.
Humane Husbandry: Nebraska Tries to Blaze a Trail
“Nebraska leads the nation in organic livestock numbers and is one of the leading producers of grass-fed beef. In time we will lead the nation in producing and marketing humanely raised livestock.” – Kevin Fulton, rancher
by Steven McFadden – July 24, 2013
Out of the smoldering rhetorical and legislative rubble of recent years, a band of farmers – the Nebraska Farmers Union – has stepped forward in a joint venture with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in an effort to blaze new, cooperative market trails that lead to increased opportunities for small and mid-size farmers, as well as to more humane livestock care.
Most Americans eat meat of one kind or another (96% of us). Questions about where our meat came from, how the animals were treated when alive, and how they were killed and prepared for our tables, are fundamental. They matter a lot, and in a lot of ways. Thus this joint venture between two groups that might well stand in opposition to each other is a model of national and perhaps international significance.
Nine billion animals are raised for the table each year in the USA. The experience the animals live out on a farm or endure in mass, industrial confinement has economic, environmental, health and moral ramifications…
The rest of the story is posted to my Deep Agroecology blog.
Reviews & Testimonials
Reviews of Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future
“…deep agroecology is more than the promotion of another growing system. It represent a fundamental change in the perceptions of humans about the choices they make in planting, harvesting, and eating food…The result is a hard hitting, powerful survey that takes the food system ideal a step further…” – Diane C. Donovan for Midwest Book Review, Nov. 2019
“…Because deep agroecology draws on a combination of science and ancient wisdom, it also highlights how many indigenous cultures have, for centuries, recognized the importance of strong, healthy communities, and how they’re dependent on the planet on which they live…An enlightening work of ecological thought.” ~ Kirkus Reviews, Nov. 2019
Reviews of Other Works
“Absorbing, engaging, thoughtful, thought-provoking, exceptionally well written, and thoroughly ‘reader friendly’ in organization and presentation, Tales of the Whirling Rainbow: Myths & Mysteries for Our Times is unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists, as well as community and academic library collections.” – Editor’s Choice, Midwest Book Review
“This wise and provocative collection is highly recommended.” – Library Journal on Profiles in Wisdom
“Our leaders should sit and listen to the counsel Steven McFadden has gathered…” – The Washington Times
“Profiles in Wisdom does a fine job not only of presenting the dignity, complexity, and wit of important Indian philosophers and religious leaders, but also of issuing cautions against easy uplift and wisdom injections…There are some stirring and unexpected powers unleashed in this book.” – The New York Times Book Review
“An excellent read. Informative without being preachy. Exactly what I have been looking for. Bravo!” – Smashwords Review written by W.E.L. about Native Knowings: Wisdom Keys for One and All
“It’s inspiring to read about all of the wonderful efforts Steven McFadden details…” – Teresa Opheim, Practical Farmers of Iowa, about The Call of the Land.
“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.” – 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.” — Charles Francis, Director, Center for Sustainable Agricultural Systems, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, reviewing The Call of the Land.
“…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
“The Call of the Land workshop at Stonewall Farm was a great opportunity to forward our goals of producing a local, sustainable food system in our region.” – Michael Faber, General Manager of Monadnock Food Co-op
“The Call of the Land workshop (presented by Steven McFadden) was a great benefit to helping us achieve our mission at the Conservation District…The event created a forum for us to meet new individuals who want to work on improving the local food system and re-engage with stakeholders who we have worked with in the past. ” – Amanda Costello, Cheshire County Conservation District, Walpole NH
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Critique Magazine: “To the uninitiated, reading Steven McFadden’s Legend of the Rainbow Warriors is a bit like hearing one’s native language spoken with an entirely new accent. The words are familiar, and the ideas and events of which he writes are certainly not news. But the light Mr. McFadden uses to illuminate his subject is alien. Self-sacrifice and stewardship of the land do not mix well with the American traditions of further, faster, and damn the consequences. Indeed, the juxtaposition of American-style progress and Native American sensibilities is one of history’s oddest coincidences…”
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Talks
Over the years I’ve had the privilege of working with groups both large and small from coast to coast, and abroad. I’ve spoken at conferences, workshops, and seminars, as well as in banks, insurance companies, hospitals, forests, farm fields, fire houses, bookstores, churches, libraries, and colleges.
My gift is to offer audiences inspiration and empowerment by speaking about visions and practical ways to realize them, grounded in expertise and experience.
Contact ~ Steven McFadden
Click here for more information.
Wise elders say that we have only this generation
to come into a harmonious, inter-connected way of living,
or our human family will be extinct!
I invite you join me and
my colleague Brooke Medicine Eagle
for an amazing, complementary gathering of wisdom keepers
beginning November 16th:
RETURNING TO EARTH ~ BECOMING FULLY HUMAN
Moving Through Current Challenges into
Thriving, Sustainable, Respectful Life
focusing on empowering you with
real, workable, sustainable solutions
for our current personal and global challenges.
To register for this free summit, please follow this link.
Sample Talks and Workshops offered by Steven McFadden
The Call of the Land: Deep Agroecology ~
Our relationships with the earth, with our local environments, and with our food are being actively challenged. Agroecology and deep agroecology are intelligent, sophisticated, and effective ways to meet and to transcend those challenges, establishing a clean, healthy foundation on the earth for our food and for the next evolutionary step of humanity. We can respond wisely and decisively to the chaos in our climate and culture, for the present and for future. My talk on The Call of the Land offers facts, experiences, ideas, and ideals leading to the well-being and upliftment characteristic of deep agroecology.
Tales of the Whirling Rainbow ~
Gather round to hear true, dynamic tellings of some of the key multicultural, multifaith myths and mysteries of the Americas, and to consider how those legends may resound helpfully in real time. They are stories worth knowing.
The ominous reality of hate-mongering and cultural division are symptoms of a deeper crisis of meaning and purpose. Because these stories arise from the deepest roots of the Americas, the Tales of the Whirling Rainbow can be of high service as we pass through the present cultural and environmental tempest.
Odyssey of the 8th Fire ~
It is my honor to be able to sound a drum, to offer flowers, to take a place in a circle, and to relate the true, epic saga of a multicultural band of pilgrims who made a prophetic journey walking from the Atlantic to the Pacific under the dramatic sky sign of the Whirling Rainbow, and the sure guidance of traditional keepers and spiritual elders of North America. Through this saga, and interactive telling, we may engage the elders’ great and generous giveaway of understandings about our land, and our lives together upon the land.
Celebrate Santa Fe’s Community Farms
– Meet Your Ambassadors to the Earth –
If you love clean, fresh, local food, then you will want to head to the Farmer’s Market on April 17, 2018 to Celebrate Santa Fe’s Community Farms, an early evening educational get together. The public is cordially invited to join with some of Santa Fe’s pioneering community farmers and authors to sample, delicious, healthy local foods, and to explore visions of how Santa Fe can become more food secure and food healthy.
The first annual Celebrate Santa Fe’s Community Farms event is set for Tuesday evening, April 17, from 5:30-7 PM at the Farmers Market on Paseo de Peralta. Donations to help defray costs are welcome.
Learn about what’s happening with local community farms, and engage with dynamic agrarian visions of what is possible for the Santa Fe community.
Sponsored by Beneficial Farms CSA, the early evening celebration will feature samples of local food, and several short presentations from local farmers and authors, including Thomas Swendson of Beneficial Farms, Mark Nelson of Synergia Farm, Steven McFadden (author of Farms of Tomorrow, and The Call of the Land), and also (other speakers ? This list is all male. We should invite a woman to speak. Who?). Tejinder Ciano of Reunity Resources will fill us in on the destiny of the historic Santa Fe Community Farm at San Ysidro Crossing.
You are cordially invited to join with your Santa Fe neighbors to Celebrate our community farms, and to explore the possibilities for supporting our local farms, increasing our local food security and food health, and helping to strengthen community.
Reiki Training – I’ve been practicing and teaching the art and discipline of Reiki hands-on complementary healing for almost 40 years. I offer Reiki training classes in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Everyone can learn Reiki healing, and everyone is welcome. Certificates awarded. You must complete Reiki I before taking Reiki II. For more information or to register, click here.
Odyssey of the 8th Fire – June, 2015 marked the 20th anniversary of the first steps along the Odyssey of the 8th Fire. To celebrate it, journalist Steven McFadden will sound the drum, tell the tale, and show an 8th Fire film relating the fundamental wisdom teachings of North America.
This one-time evening event – Odyssey of the 8th Fire – is set for Thursday evening, June 25, 2015 , 7-9:30 PM at the Unitarian Church of Lincoln, 6300 A St. Lincoln, Nebraska. The Odyssey is free, although the storyteller will “throw a blanket” to cover costs.
Storyteller McFadden will relate the true tale of a great prophetic pilgrimage from the Atlantic to the Pacific which began precisely 20 years ago — a pilgrimage which remains suspended in mystery. The journey began in the east at the Atlantic sea, then the pilgrims walked for eight months across the Heartland, fading at the Pacific’s Western Gateway.
In the unfolding of this true tale, learned elders of all nations make a great and generous giveaway of the teachings they carry for human beings.
If you’d like to sit in the circle and hear the story, you can join the Facebook events page for Odyssey of the 8th Fire.
Watch the trailer for the film at this link: http://imagicapictures.com/_movies/Trailer_8th_Fire.html
About Steven McFadden & Chiron Communications
Welcome to Chiron Communications, a conceptual umbrella to unify my diverse work as writer, storyteller, and healer. My passion is casting light upon keys that may serve the health of human beings and the earth we share.
As a journalist, I’m the author of a range of non-fiction books. Most of them are on display at the bottom of the page if you wish to learn more.
I’m honored to have had the opportunity to author an epic, nonfiction saga of North America: Odyssey of the 8th Fire. The 8th Fire tells a true story arising from the deepest roots of our land, but taking place in the present and the future. In it, circles upon circles, elders make a great and generous giveaway of the teachings they carry.
In the early 1980s I initiated Chiron Communications, but then rested the concept in the 1990s. That’s when I took time to serve as National Coordinator for the annual Earth Day USA celebration, in partnership with the Seventh Generation Fund (1993).
Through the 1990s I served as director of The Wisdom Conservancy at Merriam Hill Education Center in Greenville, New Hampshire, as a participant in The Balaton Group, and as one of the pilgrims on a great universal prayer walk from the Eastern Door at the Atlantic Ocean across Turtle Island (North America) toward the Western Gate at the Pacific. I put Chiron Communications back into gear around the turn of the millennium.
For some readers it may look as if Chiron Communications is a sprawling, sporadic, multidimensional, multinational corporation. But no. It’s just me and my laptop, with a little help from my friends.
A Reiki Master of long standing, I’ve had the opportunity to transmit the Reiki healing techniques to hundreds of students across North and Central America. It was my privilege to help John Harvey Gray and Lourdes Gray, Ph.D. write Hand to Hand: The Longest Practicing Reiki Master Tells His Story. I’ve also had the privilege to travel with and to learn from many gifted healers from all over the Americas, as well as healers from Australia, Africa, and Ireland. At the turn of the millennium I was honored to earn certification as a yoga instructor.
As the land calls out ever more powerfully, I maintain an active interest in farming and gardening in general, Food Co-ops and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in particular. I’ve reported on the growth and development of CSA in America since its inception in 1986, striving to articulate The Call of the Land.
My most recent agrarian book, Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future, won the National Indie Excellence Award in the environmental category. I invite you to visit my dedicated blog: DeepAgroecology.net
At home once again in New Mexico, I’m a member of both SouthWest Writers, and the New Mexico Book Association,
Thanks for reading. May your steps carry you along the beauty way. Respectfully, Steven McFadden
Thanks to Tim J. Hill of DraftHorse Studio for web design,
to Angela Werneke of River Light Media for the Chiron Communications logo,
and to my darling Elizabeth Wolf for the author photos.
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eep agroecology, #deepagroecology
Call of the Land ~ Deep Agroecology
Chiron’s Cave. Listen to the Call of the Land. Learn about deep agroecology.
The unavoidable challenge of the 21st Century is to respond creatively and wholeheartedly to the urgent call of the land. Our survival depends upon our response. With community and creativity we can bring about environmental repair, economic security, and social renewal. This is the call of the land.
The Call of the Land is also the title of one of my books, a response to that call. The book also sets out a forthright description of essential survival-level relationships with the web of life that demand our attention, our intelligence, and our will.
The book describes a wide range of models – creative 21st Century agrarian responses – to the urgent call of our land. The full title of the book tells the story – The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century – 2nd edition.
The book is concise in the realm of theory theory, and long on actual, practical working examples to show a broad range of possible creative, positive responses. The Call of the Land is loaded with model after model of ways for families, neighborhoods, communities, schools, and churches to meet the challenge of caring for the land and providing an ample supply of clean food.
My blog for Deep Agroecology & The Call of the Land expresses the urgent call as I and a host of other listeners hear it. In particular it explores positive creative responses to the call of the land, that we might have an abundance of clean food and heal the profoundly distressed environment in which we and our children dwell.
DEEP AGROECOLOGY
As 2020 unfolds, I’m pleased to steadily announce publication of my new book: Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future. Click on the covers below to learn more, or to purchase a copy.
Agrarian Archive: A Sampling of Articles and Essays
A Basic Call to Consciousness: Still Resounding.
Food Coops 2012: Growing Strong.
Fate of the People is Linked to the Fate of the Land: Wendell Berry.
Humane Husbandry: Nebraska Tries to Blaze a Trail
Latter Day Luther Nails Troubling Thesis to Doors at GMO Farm Citadels
Outside the Box, But Inside the Hoop:
Community Farms (CSA) at the Turn of the Millennium.
Rivulets of Revelation Flow from Two Farm & Food Conferences
Community Farms in the 21st Century
(2-part series on the history & development of CSA in the USA)
Dig Deeper ~ CSA Farms and Aggregators Thresh Things Out
(Rodale’s New Farm Magazine, Summer, 2015)
++ About 200 substantive articles and growing on my blog Deep Agroecology ~ The Call of the Land.
deep agroecology, #deepagroecology
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