Trees are a gorgeous and glorious adornment to any landscape; they also bind, feed, and shelter the soil biome. Trees stay in place for very long periods, all the while absorbing carbon and encouraging soil health. Trees actually exhale the sky, and they purify water; they create beneficial microclimates, where birds, bees, and insects abound.  

Of course, humankind cannot live on trees alone; however, we should, wherever possible, preferentially chose to support food products that come from trees. Doing this encourages the widespread wholesale planting of trees.

Four things we can do to make a difference to the timing and severity of the global eco-crisis is:

1. Cut meat and dairy consumption – way down, or better yet, stop altogether. 
2. Limit our use of fossil-fuel intensive transport, heating, and cooling.
3. Drop to our knees on the bare ground, scoop out a hollow – plant a tree – repeat. 

Do this every day – plant clusters of trees – do it frequently. Planting trees and caring for them connects us to the land and to the future. By dropping to our knees, there is a chance we may not so soon be brought to our knees. Visiting saplings as they start to take space, sprout life and reach for the sky is a more intense slow-burn joy than you would expect.  

1. Those who can’t plant trees can take equally appropriate action by choosing products without palm oil, thus saving tropical rainforests. Spending on palm oil products directly encourages the widespread wholesale destruction of billions of trees. 

 Following 2020 we are more aware of nature’s beauty, close kinship, and exquisite fragility. We will be the first generation to positively put the Earth’s needs before our own, or among the last even to have that option.  

If there is an upside – the climate countdown demands we experience the raw immediacy of being fully alive and fully engaged right now. We have all been unwillingly life-thrust into facing scary immensities with potentially fraught and monumentally consequential outcomes. We, it turns out, are last-responders. We may have to change everything. It will likely require the most seismic philosophical, cultural, and behavioral shift – ever. Aren’t we more primed and up for that than any previous generation? – bring it on.

Unlike previous generations, we cannot sleep-walk life in a glutinous stupor, believing eternity is at our disposal and Earth is provided for our plunder. We decidedly know otherwise; it will be our roar that echoes beyond these times, our defiance that alters the trajectory of events, or nothing will. Our focus is crisis-sharpened to the bright connection of everythingness. We will demonstrate the human spirit is most alive, potent, and present when facing blistering challenges and adversity – or prove it is not!

To misquote, quality of life is not simply about the economy anymore; “it’s the ecology stupid.” We are almost out of time to turn our love for Earth’s astonishing wonderments and matchless beauty from exploitation into practical, proactive nurturing and care.  

Knees – trees – please!

The post Knees, Trees, Please. first appeared on milkadamia.

The post Knees, Trees, Please. appeared first on milkadamia.

Regenerative agriculture is farming practices that rehabilitate entire ecosystems by returning nutrients to the earth rather than depleting them. Regenerative is farming without synthetics and chemical sprays, diversifying crop rotations, cover cropping, and, where appropriate reintegrating large ruminants with rotational grazing.

Industrial agriculture wants everyone else to pay up and shut up. Even in matters that directly impact our families’ well-being and their future – like how they produce our food. It is no secret the industrial mono-cropping agricultural system is seriously depleting the nation’s soils. What may not be as widely known is the food grown today is less nutrient-dense with lower amounts of vital items like protein, phosphorus, iron, calcium, riboflavin, and vitamin C than just half a lifetime ago. Robust, healthy soils make robust, healthy human populations. Agricultures’ most valuable asset is healthy soil, but industrial agriculture treats this vital asset like dirt.

The industrial mono-crop agriculture system is a politically entrenched apparatus supporting heedless aggressive exploitation of the land, massive chemical application, and waste. They are driven by greed that obstinately obstructs the change consumers so ardently desire.

What we can do about it is purchase regenerative or organic foods and speak out. We can no longer shut the folk up and eat whatever is put in front of us.

The post Shut the Folk Up first appeared on milkadamia.

The post Shut the Folk Up appeared first on milkadamia.

Ambushes, frights, and being chased by a sibling, who at that moment represented all the terrors of the night, ensured we were flushed, wild-eyed, and fully hyped by bedtime. The nightmares we conjured as entertainment became real enough for our Mother as she attempted to quiet six uncooperative ratcheted kids and settle each in bed.

When the noise level threatened to lift off the roof, our Mother would throw open the door she had shuttered behind and yell at us to “BE QUIET” then she would add the line we came to despise. “What will the neighbors think?”.

In Mom’s defense, on many evenings, it sounded like a massacre was taking place.  Yet we came to resent the neighbors deeply – “they” spoiled our fun.  We perceived, in the way children do, that they were judging us. The neighbors became the focus of all our kid grudges against the world.  They of course, knew nothing of this, and the daily file of sullen, scowling school-bound children must have been a fount of some wonderment to them.  

“What will the neighbors think’?  Was so overused by our Mother we eventually cared not a whit what the neighbors thought.  We became emboldened to do what we wanted, even in (especially in) the teeth of others’ clear disapproval. 

I have since met many talented, capable people who are so in thrall of their version of what the “neighbors” might think they will not take the risk to be fully themselves. They are tiptoeing through life – a collection of performed duties and an endless round of people appeasing.  Taking the least frowned upon path to the sanctuary of the grave.  I have often wished I could reach in and flick the to-heck-with-the-neighbors switch and free them to be fully, gloriously, messily themselves, but I digress.

One of the larger questions ever asked cuts to the chase – who is my neighbor?

We are discovering the impending climate nightmare scenario is not kid-stuff, but global in scope, and devastating in scale.  We are all in a single atmosphere together, we are not climatically independent, there are no boundary fences, to separate our fates, no sheltering hedges.   On the planetary scale Earth it turns out is just one home, humanity one family.

We thought knowledge and technology might prove us separate and above interdependence – extinction of vitality on our lush raft in space could be the high price of our conceit.  What we each do from here on in percusses everyone else. Loving and looking out for our neighbors is loving and looking out for yourself  – this can’t be separated either.

Maybe if other planets are inhabited, they consider us neighbors.  Watching what we are doing to our beautiful world must be a wonderment to them.  If we do not collectively turn this around, Mother Earth might well enquire of us – what must the neighbors be thinking?

The post What Will The Neighbors Think first appeared on milkadamia.

The post What Will The Neighbors Think appeared first on milkadamia.

Meanwhile the crash, roar, and thunder that accompanies so much of our usual activity remains muted and hushed.  That all this comes at a high price in human lives and is accompanied by grief and loss, ensures any acknowledgment that the Earth is being gifted some much-needed breathing space, must also be appropriately muted and hushed.

Earth Day – every day.

Milkadamia.

The post Happy Earth Day to You… first appeared on milkadamia.

The post Happy Earth Day to You… appeared first on milkadamia.

Click here to read the full article.

The post Taking on Palm and Dairy first appeared on milkadamia.

The post Taking on Palm and Dairy appeared first on milkadamia.

Keeping updated on the emerging data of our climate crises and the actions taken to alleviate its impact, permits a similar idea to bud.  Within our own planet, there also exists worlds in parallel, upside-down and opposite worlds. In one the need for immediate and decisive action on the climate crisis is obvious, while another parallel world prefers its citizens just keep calm and carry on.  In one world we are invited to take up the yoke of responsibility and the other world prefers we just leave things and let the-as-yet-unborn deal with it all.  In one, the doctrines and processes of governments and politics employ cemented static mindsets even as the climate proves a tumultuous cascade of dynamic processes potentially propelling us to who knows what.  Parallel but opposite worlds.

Between the extremes is yet another world, the one we common folk commonly inhabit.  It is our neighborhood, where we live and work, our town, our city.  A place mostly comforting and familiar because over time it has been sculpted and shaped by the actions, motives and cares of local people to fit local needs.  This is our sphere of influence and the world we want to preserve.

We care about orangutans, koalas and polar bears, we really do, but the sheer breadth, scale, and complexity of the problems overwhelm. The many eco-urgencies progressively lose impact as they increase in scale and are located far beyond our reach.  Most of us have skill and geographical constraints on our ability to positively impact big issues like rising sea levels, melting glaciers and bleaching corrals.   We are best placed, and frankly most incentivized, to start where we are and work from the bottom up. Where we can be busy is in saving those things near us that we love, and then enlarging the space of our influence as we go.

Of course, we understand ecosystems are not respecters of town boundaries nor do they care about the depth of our attachment to local amenities like river-walks, and parklands.  We know our homes and towns cannot be insulated from the causal network in which everything is bound together.  Yet that same causal network allows that we can remain local and still have global influence if we choose our actions wisely.

Transportation of all forms is the cause of about 14% of the human-generated carbon, and incredibly Palm oil production is the cause of about the same amount of carbon going into the sky!

Our use of transport is not always a choice, it is hard to imagine life without some form of transport.  However, our use of palm oil is always a choice furthermore it’s easy to imagine life without it, after-all humans thrived until the 1960s with most not knowing palm oil even existed.  Not only is palm oil a choice, ultimately and critically, but it’s also our choice.

One important reason we need to actively save that which we love is, the actions of one person always influences the information base of another and on and on the impact grows.  Starting one thing will encourage and engage others and collectively we can improve the long-term destiny of our world with our own self-generated cascade of dynamic processes.

Palm oil is an unnecessary and offensive ecological disaster, the production of this one item is causing as much climatic damage as every single motorcycle, car, truck, train, boat, and airplane on earth.  Further tropical forests have been and are being burned recklessly and extensively to make way for ever-more palm oil monoculture.  The palm oil industry is boasting that our demand for palm oil is set to quadruple, vast and beautiful tropical Peat forests will be burnt to meet that demand, our demand, but only if we allow it.  All this mindless destruction is they say just the law of supply and demand in action.

Obviously, we are not consciously demanding millions of acres of tropical forests be burned on our behalf each year – if we could make the rules, we would, in fact, demand the very opposite.   But we do inadvertently incentivize and fund the destruction through our purchase of items made with palm oil – and we purchase lots of them.

Palm oil is in so many products it is really quite hard to avoid.  Manufacturers love to use palm oil because it is quite versatile and very cheap. But of course, Palm oil actually has, a hidden, but extraordinarily high eco-price, it is costing us the earth.

Palm oil is likely an ingredient in most of your favorite brands.  But if we commit to doing this thing, this one hard-ish thing, that will complicate shopping a bit and require persistence on our part – if we switch to palm oil-free products – we, together, will compel a positive and pertinent eco-impact that is equal to shutting down all transportation globally. Without leaving home we collectively can send a crystal-clear message to manufacturers. They respond to dips in their sales and market share with an alacrity and intensity we wish they reserved for measuring and reducing the eco-impact of their ingredients.

We, the people, can create new laws of supply and demand – any company that supplies products containing palm oil will see demand diminish, and their bright cheerful logo can come to symbolize the dark badge of corporate greed.   It is only our patronage and goodwill that gives power to brands, and it is our purchases that gift fortune to the companies behind them – they prosper only as they serve our needs and wants.  Change those wants and we change a great deal besides.

Watch out for claims of sustainable palm oil.  The truth is there is no such thing as sustainable tropical forest destruction.  Call BS on that sort of virtue signaling nonsense.

Not buying palm oil products will demonstrate even the biggest global issues are not beyond our reach or influence.  As we get strategic about palm oil, corals, glaciers, sea levels and even Borneo’s (oxymoron named) pigmy elephants will directly benefit.  Those koalas, polar bears and orangutans we care about will get to breathe easier also, as will we all.

We may have our backs against the climatic wall (so to speak) but neither the scope of the ecological problems, nor our ineffective leaders loitering in their parallel world, should cause us to ignore the problems that we, and possibly only we, can effectively attend.  We may not be able to address everything – but believe me, we can address this one big thing.

Historically the extraordinary courage of ordinary people manifests clearest in crises when we are rising to defend neighbors, neighborhoods, and homes – like now.  The intensity of stubborn determination and ingenuity we common folk can collectively bring to this fight is one of humanity’s super-powers.

Besides, we have to make our infinite number of parallel selves feel good about us, even that fortunate us living in the world populated by cute purple pygmy elephants.

The post Palming Off first appeared on milkadamia.

The post Palming Off appeared first on milkadamia.

Thankfully we can be unexpectedly jagged by some arrestingly beautiful natural vista so captivating it jolts us awake. Beauty can and does elevate something deep within our souls. Lifting us for a moment above the clinging molasses of the mundane, leaving us calmed and refreshed. Beauty reminds us we can be and want to be, much more than our base nature. Our sometimes startlingly powerful receptiveness to nature’s gorgeousness informs we own synchronicity with the natural and the beautiful; it vibrates an internal tuning fork.  It might be a single tree, a bird, a stream, a mountain, or a valley that captures. At that moment, we are not calculating its usefulness, profit or utility but are transported by beauty for its own sake. If the mere existence of beauty percusses so deeply that it elevates our thoughts and calms our fears, what does the opposite do? What does the destruction and loss of beautiful things do to us?

Heretofore we believed it ok to exploit large mammals, capturing them from the wild and caging them. They suffered as they performed circus tricks, the better to entertain us. We now realize mammals like Elephants, Orcas, and humans, are all participants sharing in the same splendid mystery of life. We have recalibrated what we value and can no longer endure the idea of these beautiful, intelligent creatures suffering the lifelong trauma of captivity on our behalf. We gain more excellent value, beauty, and joy from freeing them than we ever did from exploiting them.

At this time of unpredictable climate extremes, we are reorienting ourselves in other ways also, wanting to treasure rather than exploit the natural world. Saving the beauty and biodiversity that remains and regenerating what we have exhausted provides more excellent value, beauty, and joy than continued unfettered exploitation will.

Many are seeking a life of quality over pursuing the entrenched ideal of quality-of-life, even as it costs the earth.  We realize we have been too focused on turning our allotted hours into material and social gain. Blinded to the potency-of-worth, the restorative beauty supporting and surrounding us affords. The plundering of Earth’s treasure stores to enrich us is, it turns out, ultimately leaving us bereft. We are realizing that we have traded too much for limp pastimes and small pickings that will never satisfy or compensate.

The shift from wanting only the best for us and ours to calculating instead, what matters most, will most clearly illumine who we are, even to ourselves. Does the question change from how much is enough? – to – what is just too beautiful to lose? To choose what you love enough to save is not saying: this is better than that, it is saying this is more important.

Part of the whelming sorrow-scape shaping our reaction to the Australian fires is the degree of pain from the loss of that which is made precious through its fragile beauty. It hurts, and it hurts bad. Yet we cannot allow the vice-grip of horror at what we have wrought to freeze us into the fetal position. That is also a trap, another coma – just when the world needs you fully awakened to its loveliness and wonders.

This is an all-hands-on-deck moment if ever there was one. The child in you is sparking up again, outraged, but brimming over, as fresh young minds do, with expectation and possibility. The kid knows you will meet humanity’s most significant challenge with renewed zeal coursing through your veins, fired again by the aspirations and hopes that give life its gravitas. The kid knows, in the way kids do, you were born to palpitate with fullness of being and burn with fierceness of purpose during just such a time as this. The kid is confident the deeds you will do, and sacrifices you will make will weigh, against the backdrop of climate crises, as moral grandeur if that is what it is going to take. What do we tell that kid? And all the kids to follow?

As adults, we can choose to discover how much we can save if we wholeheartedly try – or- be forced to learn how much we can, or cannot, get along without.

As even kids know – a world is such a beautiful thing to waste.

The post A World is Such a Beautiful Thing to Waste. first appeared on milkadamia.

The post A World is Such a Beautiful Thing to Waste. appeared first on milkadamia.

It is personal.

We know people being affected day in and day out. Family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors.

We know the places being scourged. We’ve laughed in those spots, taken a stroll, saw them pass by our car window as we gazed into the landscape.

We are saddened by the tremendous loss of life. The images of people fleeing, animals perishing and the trees engulfed in flames will forever haunt us.

We are mad by the denial of the cause and the insanity to think this won’t keep happening. We are mad that there are other fires, affecting other homes, burning across the planet, charring the earth.

Yet, we are proud of our fellow citizens rushing in to fight the fires, to save the animals to rescue those stranded, to condemn those that say this is normal. This is not normal.

We want to thank everyone who has reached out and asked how we are doing. It means a great deal. We won’t stay sad and we won’t stay mad, we will go back to being hopeful. We hope this is a wake-up call. That the practices that led to the fires will be questioned. That those denying climate change will be drowned out by the voices that speak for the billions of animals that perished, by the voices that speak for the scarred earth and the life below the surface, and by the voices that speak for the air we breathe.

It’s our choice as to what “we” do next.

The post The Raging Fire(s) first appeared on milkadamia.

The post The Raging Fire(s) appeared first on milkadamia.

We don’t pay much mind to hand-wringers, those who proclaim the world is dying. We choose instead to labor for its health. It is futile to agonize over the vastness of the task or to weep over losing that which is not yet fully lost.

Even soils degraded by plows and chemicals can be regenerated, restored and revived. Though their vitality and structure have been diminished from relentless mono-cropping, they can again be the silent engine of life they always were.

Regenerative farming focuses on the health of the soil. A good regenerative farm actually creates new layers of topsoil every year. The technique is to stop exploiting and abusing soil and to work with it. With crop rotation and cover crops, no plowing and no chemical or artificial fertilizer inputs, the soils can begin to regenerate. Given the opportunity, the microorganisms multiply into astound abundance and set about regenerating land.

All of life on Earth is possible only because of all the life in the earth. To save the Earth, we must first save the earth. Healthy topsoil sequesters astounding quantities of Co2 – enough that if 20% of the currently cultivated soils were farmed regeneratively we could halt and reverse the buildup of carbon in the sky.

How the food you purchase is grown matters. Your choice of regeneratively farmed food over the produce of industrialized farming has genuine and immediate eco-pertinence.

The post For The Love of Earth first appeared on milkadamia.

The post For The Love of Earth appeared first on milkadamia.

The early climate models they developed alarmed them but were crude and left room for alternative explanations. In time more powerful climate models confirmed their central calculations – unless we acted decisively, we were incrementing our way toward serious trouble down the track.

Scientists sounded a series of warnings. We were impacting the weather and were either cooling or possibly warming the whole place. Additional time, investment and computing power settled it – we were warming, not cooling the planet a little – 2-6 degrees over the next 100 years or so. Such a small change spread over such a long period seemed trivial, even desirable, to many of the world’s populace. Also, many scientific uncertainties emerged, and the sheer complexity of our climate left lots of space for doubts and limitless action, stalling debate.

The consequences of these seemingly trivial temperature changes slowly became evident, and we learned they were not going to be good for us, not good at all. Scientists sounded a louder warning citing something called the greenhouse effect.

Now, greenhouses are little islands of abundance, growing vegetables and ripening tomatoes out of season. My gentle and wise grandparents had a greenhouse at the bottom of their garden. They loved to spend the hours between naps there, pottering, muttering and humming tunelessly. Their greenhouse was a glorious disarray of mismatched containers and tiny pampered cuttings. This is where my grandparents most deeply communed with nature via long, rambling conversations with random seedlings. Why should we be terrified of the planet becoming a peaceful if somewhat odd and mildly chaotic greenhouse like my grandparents had?

They tried the label climate change – such a poor description for a crisis. Climate is always changing, always has been, always will be. It’s a bit like the weather, isn’t it? We discuss the weather endlessly, and much of the discussion is on how changeable it is. So, nothing new and no need for alarm there.

They tried global warming – “warm” is a nice word, cozy, snug and welcoming. Who doesn’t want to be warm? I love being warm. Walking barefoot along sun-warmed sand with my wife by my side is the most potent and happy sensory memory of mine. Warm spring sun on my back is my number one happy place. We embrace warming in a warm embrace.

Today some news outlets are calling it a climate crisis – ok, that is a bit better, a crisis at least sounds alarming. But meanwhile thirty years have gone by and much of the population remains a bit bemused and ambivalent. There has been little progress toward mitigating the impending crunch and not much strident demand from we the people. So, politicians know they can get away with kicking the can further and further down the road. Let the generations to come worry about it is their attitude.

What I ask is the next time the world is in deadly peril requiring alarm and action – for goodness sake let the marketing team do the naming exercise!

Words matter. Some have the power to startle, shock, incite, excite, inspire and cause action. Others comfort and lull. Our scientists chose the wrong words.

My choice in bold capitals is the acronym WTF.

I don’t mean to offend, but I find the inaction by our leaders even more offensive and such an inexcusable obscenity that only the strongest language will suffice!

WTF – to all of us. How can we love the good life so much that we casually impose crushing hardship on our own offspring?

Politicians, WTF and WTF again, calculating, cynical, callous cowards only interested in power, prestige and pockets, where is your leadership? Where is your compassion and empathy – where is your love of this planet and the people you are supposed to serve?

WTF no one is coming to save us – we are going to have to take action ourselves.

We propose as one action demanding regeneratively farmed products. We need 20% of currently cultivated land to become regenerative, thus halting the buildup of Co2 and creating some breathing space. This we can do.

We all need to get busy with WTF – Winning The Future.

The post How Not To Brand first appeared on milkadamia.

The post How Not To Brand appeared first on milkadamia.

Ten thousand small farmers say, “We need Congress to work with us to develop food and agriculture policies that support climate-friendly organic and regenerative farming, ranching, and land-use practices.” These farmers ask that Congress quit subsidizing monopolistic, exploitive industrial-scale agriculture. Industrial farming pollutes the environment, produces unhealthy food and disproportionately devastates rural communities and economies, they contend.

The concerted cry of farmers is due to what they see happening in their soil and in the food they produce. Their agenda is straightforward: to sustain their livelihood and ensure humanity’s food supply, we must change how we farm. The switch to regenerative farming is not simple. It is even harder when fighting against the tide of subsidies and crop insurance the government reserves for traditional methods reliant on chemicals and plows.

Small farmers are demanding action. Today, students are leaving classes and taking to the streets to fight for their tomorrow. Inspired by Greta Thunberg, they are protesting the inaction of the adults on climate change.

Life is the accumulation of todays and tomorrows. We have only the present and the future. What we do in the present will decide the number of tomorrows we accumulate.

The post Enough Is Enough first appeared on milkadamia.

The post Enough Is Enough appeared first on milkadamia.

Then cometh the climate crises! In seeking to find effective ways to help avert the worst-case scenario, we discover 50% of our topsoil has already disappeared by erosion and desertification.

Much of the loss is due to Poor Farming Practices ! As a consequence, rainfall patterns are shifting beyond recognition, and vast areas will soon become too hot or dry to grow food.

We also discover that farming lobbies are bloated and powerful and fully invested in maintaining the destructive status quo. That too many Government Subsidies flow to farmers, without which, most dairy, livestock and stock-feed production farms are as wildly uneconomic as they are inefficient. Our taxes support unnecessary land destruction and water wastage. All encouraged by the herbicide/pesticide and artificial fertilizer companies embedded within the agriculture system.

They are ruthless in policing their plundering of the system, existing only to maintain their free-range exclusivity and dominance over government agricultural policy and largess. They Thwart the development of alternative farming solutions and stall conscience on global climate change. They Block Any Shift that may threaten their income or influence. Thereby they diminish even the incredible potential of human ingenuity and resilience, just as these attributes are most desperately needed to help solve the most significant threat humans face.

Those few brave farmers who attempt alternate farming methods are abruptly cut off from Government funding. The monolith of agricultural policy remains focused on rewarding the intense application of chemicals. The rusted-on article of faith, that chemicals provide food security, endures, despite all the evidence shouting the very opposite.

Alternate farming methods

1. Organic farming has now been part of the farming scene for decades, yet less than 1% of U.S. farms are organic. We wish there were many more. The organic movement has stalled out, and it is not entirely focused on soil vitality. Constant plowing and disking to control weeds has severely degraded the soil on many organic farms.
2. Soils revitalized through the alternative of regenerative farming take up and hold massive quantities of Co2. Enough to halt and then reverse the buildup of carbon in the sky. We need 20% of the currently cultivated land, globally, to move to regenerative agriculture as rapidly as possible.

Regenerative agriculture produces nutrient-dense food in abundance. Regenerative farmers prosper without having to charge a premium for their produce. Regenerative agriculture focuses on the continual rebuilding of the vitality of soils. The improved soil structure created on regenerative farms slows erosion, saves water, supports billions of microorganisms and takes Co2 from the atmosphere. The abundant quantities of nutrient-dense chemical-free food is a welcome side-benefit.

Regenerative agriculture is soul-deep good for farmers. The satisfaction of rebuilding soil and creating an abundant future also regenerate the heart and enthusiasm. Regenerative farming is our last best hope for allowing the Earth some much-needed breathing space.

We have no time to wait for legislators to find the intellect, fortitude and moral fiber to stand up to Big Ag and the farming lobbies. The Big Ag companies view soil in much the same way we see (or don’t see) the paper on which this article appears: merely a medium for the written message. So, the land is only to them a substrate to hold their chemicals and artificial fertilizers — only the lifeless underpinning of their wealth creation system. Value for them is not in the soil, but in the chemicals they foist onto it. Good topsoil is after all their only competitor, a competitor they have been systematically killing off for decades because good, fertile, productive topsoil makes their whole business model redundant.

Good, fertile, productive topsoil is what regenerative farming is all about. Healthy topsoil is the living, resilient, abundantly fruitful silent engine of all life on Earth. Every growing thing, even every aspiration we hold and our very future, depends on the continuing vitality of our lands. Soil is the goose that lays all the golden eggs. A goose that is rapidly becoming too chemically toxic to keep producing.

Now science informs us that without intervention and dramatic change in agriculture, we have no more than 59 harvests left to us. Read that sentence again! It has become imperative that we regenerate our soils.

As the soil goes, so goes all life above it. 

The good news is that consumers across the globe are spontaneously altering their food purchases in support of our planet. Many will join in demanding regeneratively farmed produce – the alternative is just too weighted with dispiriting consequence to contemplate.

We are in this battle together, and we have to win. Now is a historical all-hands-on-deck moment. We, the common folk of Earth, collectively face a most common problem. We can match the fragility of life with our ferocity to save it.

We the people can enable regenerative farming and the planet to flourish – or not.

As for milkadamia, we choose to support the Earth’s earth through regenerative agriculture.

#ItsRChoice

Jim Richards, CEO milkadamia

The post To Save the Earth, We Must Save the Earth first appeared on milkadamia.

The post To Save the Earth, We Must Save the Earth appeared first on milkadamia.

A few of the action steps recommended in University of Michigan Carbon Footprint Factsheet:

• Eat local, vegetarian or organic foods. For non-vegetarians, replace some beef consumption with chicken.

• Walk, bike, carpool, use mass transit or drive a best-in-class vehicle.

• Use a low-flow shower head to save 350 lbs of Co2 per year.

• Recycle half a household’s waste to save 2,400 lbs of Co2 per year.

• Shop smart and purchase items with a comparatively low carbon footprint, when possible.

We agree with the need to reduce carbon emissions, but we also believe that more can and should be done. We need to capture and store carbon back in the soil via regenerative farming practices. Please visit the It’s R Choice page to learn more about regenerative farming and how we can all help to give the Earth some breathing room.

The post The Imprint We (Can) Leave first appeared on milkadamia.

The post The Imprint We (Can) Leave appeared first on milkadamia.

Regenerative farming is a term for a collection of proven farming methods. Many were abandoned for the alluring promises of large scale farming. Exchanged for the massive application of artificial fertilizers, chemical herbicides and deadly insecticides. Degraded soils, devoid of the cocktail of microscopic life that builds soil health and sequesters carbon, is the disheartening result. We have been quite literally losing the plots.

Regenerative farming recognizes healthy topsoil is the underpinning of life on Earth. This method of agriculture creates layers of new healthy soil each year. Healthy topsoil sequesters enormous quantities of Co2 – industrial agriculture, by contrast, releases vast amounts of Co2. Rejecting abusive inputs like pesticides, chemical fertilizers, fumigants and GMOs to push production, regenerative farming uses a set of proven principles that are about continuously improving resources rather than exploiting and depleting them.

Regenerative farming produces healthier, more nutrient-dense food in abundance. Continual increases in soil quality and quantity allow productivity on these farms to swell. It goes far beyond the rather flaccid goal of being merely sustainable. To create enough food without destroying our natural resources and health, we need to embrace regenerative agriculture on a significant scale.

Our purpose

If a mere 20% of all the world’s cultivated land moved to regenerative farming, it could store enough carbon to halt then reverse the buildup of Co2. We, the world’s food purchasers, are the only power enabled to force change on a scale that alters the predicted trajectory of the health of our planet.

We each express our values with every dollar we spend on food. We will make thousands of food purchases in our lifetime. We can, through purposely directing those purchases, speak to corporations and agriculturalists in the language which they listen most attentively: their market-share, their sales and their profits. Every dollar spent on food not only sustains families, but it also sustains industries and agricultural systems. It turns out; it’s our choice after all. Through our spending, we support agricultural systems or let them shrivel on the vine (so to speak).

The 20% of currently cultivated land required to be farmed regeneratively (a vast acreage) is scattered across borders, separated by oceans, rivers, cultures, politics, beliefs and seasons. No single entity has governance, but fortunately, none is required. The force that can convert agricultural practice to regenerative farming is also scattered across borders and oceans and separated by politics, race, mountain ranges and rivers – it is we – the purchasers and consumers.

Our request for, and insistence upon, regeneratively farmed food can help to ensure Earth has a lush future. You can be this revolution. There is no clash of arms, no muscle and bluster, just the purposeful application of values common to us all, consistently expressed in food choice.

It is not pie in the sky – we are already doing it. Plant-based milk, a category milkadamia operates in, is proof. Mighty dairy, once a virtual monopoly, is being reduced and humbled as consumers across the globe, acting on environmental, health and ethical values, redirect their spending away from dairy. This alone demonstrates it is our spending that enables food companies to bloat to seeming invincibility – or not. We chose who grows what, and who doesn’t, and that is a fantastically promising idea as we face pressing eco-challenges. That folk, from all over, are independently making food choices based on the values they hold is a heartening and invigorating cultural phenomenon – and our best hope.

Not bystanders

We are not helpless, we are not uninformed and we are not mere pawns in a game played by corporations and governments. As powerful as they seem, in this game of food supply and demand, we are the queens and the kings, they serve us. They may have forgotten this – we must not. We may individually be small, but we know how to be defiant when the situation calls for it.

By demanding regeneratively farmed products at the grocery and restaurant, we have in our hands a lever that can achieve that goal of 20% of cultivated land becoming regenerative. There is a long way to go– we are starting small and regenerative products may be hard to find at first, but our purchases will force the change faster than any legislation or protest can achieve.

Food companies cannot continue to view us as a compliant herd if we demand to be heard. We are more informed than ever. Discounting our ability to influence, and even wholly alter outcomes, is to accept we are helpless. For those of us who love the world (and who doesn’t?) the question is – How much more will we allow them to take from us? – when it is, in fact, we who regulate the taking.

The eco issues threatening us are not external to us – they are us. We are the change we seek, the hope we need, and it is “we” who can save us.

It’s R Choice.

We can take Responsibility.

We can Refuse to be passive bystanders.

We can up-Root destructive agricultural practices.

We can Restore productivity by supporting regenerative farming.

We can Rise up.

We can be this agricultural Revolution and be the fix.

Jim Richards, CEO, milkadamia

PS – milkadamia has one macadamia farm – Jindilli Farm. Not all the macadamia nuts we use in milkadamia come from our farm. However, the ones that do are grown using regenerative methods. We are still learning: life on Jindilli Farm has become a knowledge quest for the best ways to build healthy new topsoil. We have plenty to learn, we are not fully there yet, but we are fully committed.

Our purpose for Jindilli Farm is to develop it into an influence for regenerative farming within our rural community and far beyond. However, our hope is that we, and our farm, will quickly become an irrelevance because folk have far surpassed any influence we may have had through their widespread support of regeneratively farmed food.

Meanwhile, like all farmers who turn to regenerative farming, our enjoyment of farming, hope for the future and love of the land has also been regenerated and elevated. The beauty of our farm, the entwining, interconnectedness, and cross-dependence of life there, along with the idea that photosynthesis and subterranean microbes are the silent engines of life on our planet, and that we are entirely dependent on them humbles – as it should.

Long, long may it all continue.

The post The World’s Eco Recovery Is On Us first appeared on milkadamia.

The post The World’s Eco Recovery Is On Us appeared first on milkadamia.

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