Tag Archive for: Policy

A Climate Change Solution Beneath Our Feet

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Author: UC Davis | Published: May 17, 2017 

When we think of climate change solutions, what typically comes to mind is the transportation we use, the lights in our home, the buildings we power and the food we eat. Rarely do we think about the ground beneath our feet.

Kate Scow thinks a lot about the ground, or, more precisely, the soil. She’s been digging into the science of how healthy soils can not only create productive farmlands, but also store carbon in the ground, where it belongs, rather than in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Looking across the landscape on a spring day at Russell Ranch Sustainable Agricultural Facility, most people would simply see a flat, mostly barren field. But Scow—a microbial ecologist and director of this experimental farm at the University of California, Davis—sees a living being brimming with potential. The soil beneath this field doesn’t just hold living things—it is itself alive.

Scow likens soil to the human body with its own system of “organs” working together for its overall health. And, like us, it needs good food, water and care to live up to its full potential.

Solutions beneath our feet

Farmers and gardeners have long sung the praises of soil. For the rest of us, it’s practically invisible. But a greater awareness of soil’s ability to sequester carbon and act as a defense against climate change is earning new attention and admiration for a resource most of us treat like dirt.

Soil can potentially store between 1.5 and 5.5 billion tons of carbon a year globally. That’s equivalent to between 5 and 20 billion tons of carbon dioxide. While significant, that’s still just a fraction of the 32 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted every year from burning fossil fuels.

Soil is just one of many solutions needed to confront climate change.

But the nice thing about healthy soils, Scow said, is that creating them not only helps fight climate change—it also brings multiple benefits for agricultural, human and environmental health.

“With soil, there’s so much going on that is so close to us, that’s so interesting and multifaceted, that affects our lives in so many ways—and it’s just lying there beneath our feet,” she said.

Subterranean secrets 

Underground, an invisible ecosystem of bugs, or microorganisms, awaits. In fact, there are more microbes in one teaspoon of soil than there are humans on Earth. Many of them lie dormant, just waiting to be properly fed and watered.

A well-fed army of microbes can go to work strengthening the soil so it can grow more food, hold more water, break down pollutants, prevent erosion and, yes, sequester carbon.

“I love the word ‘sequestration,’” said Scow, who thinks the word is reminiscent of secrecy, tombs and encryption. “Soil is filled with microbes who are waiting it out. The conditions may not be right for them—it’s too dry or too wet, or they don’t have the right things to eat. They’re sequestered. They’re entombed. But if the right conditions come, they will emerge. They will bloom, and they will flourish.”

KEEP READING ON THE WASHINGTON POST 

With Climate Chaos, Who Will Feed Us?

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Published 2014

The Industrial Food Chain uses 70% of the world’s agricultural resources to produce just 30% of our global food supply. Conversely, the Peasant Food Web provides 70% of the global food supply while using only 30% of agricultural resources.

The Peasant Food Web encourages diversity through breeding millions of varieties of thousands of crops, nurturing thousands of livestock breeds and aquatic species, while the Industrial Food Chain has narrowed this vast cornucopia down to a dozen crops, a handful of livestock species and collapsing fish stocks.

The Industrial Food Chain wastes two-thirds of its food production, devastates ecosystems, causes over $4 trillion in damages, and either under-nourishes or over-feeds 3.4 billion people. The Peasant Food Web is environmentally and nutritionally constructive.

1. Who feeds us today?

The Industrial Chain: Provides 30% of all food consumed (crops, fish, etc.) but uses about 70-80% of world’s arable land to grow 30-40% of crop-derived food; 1 accounts for >80% of fossil fuels 2 and 70% of water 3 used in agriculture; causes 44-57% of emitted GHGs annually 4; deforests 13 million ha 5 and destroys 75 billion tons of topsoil 6 each year; controls almost all of the 15% of food that is traded internationally 7 (i.e., 15% of all the food produced in the world) and dominates the $7 trillion commercial grocery market,8 while leaving almost 3.4 billion either undernourished or overweight.9 6

The Peasant Web:

Provides >70% of total food eaten by people:10 15-20% via urban agriculture; 11 10-15% from hunting and gathering; 12 5-10% from fishing; 13 and 35-50% from farms (harvests 60-70% of food crops from 20-30% of arable land); 14 accounts for <20% of fossil fuel 15 and 30% of water used in agriculture; 16 nurtures and sustainably uses diversity and dominates the 85% of the world’s food grown and consumed within national borders; 17 is the major (often sole) provider of the food that reaches the 2 billion hungry and undernourished.18

The Industrial Chain:

Provides 30% of all food consumed (crops, fish, etc.) but uses about 70-80% of world’s arable land to grow 30-40% of crop-derived food; 1 accounts for >80% of fossil fuels 2 and 70% of water 3 used in agriculture; causes 44-57% of emitted GHGs annually 4; deforests 13 million ha 5 and destroys 75 billion tons of topsoil 6 each year; controls almost all of the 15% of food that is traded internationally 7 (i.e., 15% of all the food produced in the world) and dominates the $7 trillion commercial grocery market,8 while leaving almost 3.4 billion either undernourished or overweight.9 6 The Peasant Web: Provides >70% of total food eaten by people:10 15-20% via urban agriculture; 11 10-15% from hunting and gathering; 12 5-10% from fishing; 13 and 35-50% from farms (harvests 60-70% of food crops from 20-30% of arable land); 14 accounts for <20% of fossil fuel 15 and 30% of water used in agriculture; 16 nurtures and sustainably uses diversity and dominates the 85% of the world’s food grown and consumed within national borders; 17 is the major (often sole) provider of the food that reaches the 2 billion hungry and undernourished.18

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE

The Business Case for Soil

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Author: Jess Davies | March 15, 2017 

Nobody likes dirty business, but the business world must get to grips with dirt. Soil provides food, fibres and fuels, and regulates water resources and climate. Yet most businesses are unaware that their bottom lines depend on soil; nor are they aware of the risks they face from its degradation. More must recognize that improving soil quality is a smart investment.

One-third of all soils and more than half of agricultural soils are moderately or highly degraded. Erosion, loss of organic carbon, compaction and salinization reduce soil’s fertility and ability to hold moisture1. Every year, we damage another 12 million hectares — an area the size of Bulgaria — through deforestation, overgrazing, intensive farming, urbanization and pollution2. Climate change and biodiversity loss exacerbate soil problems. Yet global needs for food and resources are rising as populations grow, lifestyles shift and the world transitions to a low-carbon economy.

Many businesses in the agricultural and forestry arenas, and some in the food sector, describe the measures they’ve taken to reduce soil impacts in their sustainability reports. Most others do not. Soil is vital to all industries that use plant or animal products in their supply chains, from fashion to pharmaceuticals and, increasingly, energy. Insurers and investors have a stake — when crops fail, they lose money, commodity prices rise and operations are disrupted.

Businesses are aware of the risks of climate change: more than 900 companies petitioned President Donald Trump for the United States to stay in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Extreme weather, water scarcity, natural disasters and climate change were listed in the top five risks in terms of impact in the World Economic Forum’s 2017 Global Risks Perception Survey. Soil cuts across all these environmental concerns but was not mentioned.

If the private sector is serious about sustainability and commitments to climate change, it must take action on soil. In collaboration with researchers, businesses should advocate for international legislation, assess their soil risks and impacts and invest in maintaining and enhancing this resource.

Buried treasure

Soil’s invisibility in the boardroom is the result more of unfamiliarity than apathy. For instance, last October, I ran a session on the risks and opportunities that soil presents at the annual meeting of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a chief-executive-led forum of more than 200 multinational companies. Participants from across the accounting, agriculture, chemicals, engineering and food sectors said that they were surprised to learn of soil’s roles beyond agriculture.

Water regulation is one function in which business has a stake. Soil moisture is crucial for rain-fed agriculture, which accounts for three-quarters of human usage of fresh water3. Soils that are compacted, eroded or lacking in organic material hold less water. This increases the likelihood of floods and the impact of droughts, and intensifies competition for water resources. Water scarcity is widely acknowledged as a major risk to the global economy4: in 2016, droughts and shortages cost businesses US$14 billion5. The contributions of soil to water problems and its potential for mitigating risks are uncertain, however.

Water-intensive industries such as beverages, mining and energy are taking action in the catchments where they operate. For example, the Coca-Cola Company has been working with wildlife charity WWF and communities to maintain irrigation channels in Nepal, remove invasive sugar cane from the banks of Rio Grande and reforest in Mexico to improve water availability6. It should also look at protecting local soils by, for example, reducing disturbance and promoting conservation agriculture.

Climate risk and mitigation is another area in which businesses underappreciate soil’s potential. It is the largest global reservoir of organic carbon. Land-use change and poor soil management have resulted in a loss of 42–78 gigatonnes of carbon from soils over the past century7. The majority was emitted as carbon dioxide. This compares with 450–600 gigatonnes of anthropogenic carbon emissions since the industrial revolution.

Sustainable land management can reverse this trend by increasing the amount of carbon stored in soils. On 21–23 March, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) will hold the first Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon. The aim is to review the role of soils in climate change and integrate the issue into the regular assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

KEEP READING ON NATURE.COM

Ben Hewitt: A Groundswell for Agricultural Change

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Published: March 10, 2017 

When I was a young boy, I traveled every summer to the Iowa farm where my mother was raised. There, my grandparents grew hundreds of acres of corn and soy. It was not the biggest farm in Iowa, not by a long shot, but it was plenty big enough. I remember standing at the edge of a cornfield, gazing toward the horizon, trying to discern where the field ended. And failing. I remember riding in the combine with my grandfather at harvest time, listening to the crop report on the radio, watching row after row after row of corn fall beneath the cutter bar. My grandfather didn’t talk much. Neither did I.

This was in the late ’70s and early ’80s, in this nation’s halcyon days of commodity cropping. Those who truly understood how damaging this style farming was to the land, the soil, the consumers and even the farmers themselves were relatively few and far between, while the rest of us were in the thrall of rapidly increasing yields, economies of scale and the lure of new technology.

Forty years later, we no longer have any excuse for failing to acknowledge the destructiveness of contemporary commodity agriculture and the fragility it has engendered across the spectrums of economy, ecology and human health, to name but a few. In Vermont, this is most visible in the perennially stressed commodity dairy industry, in which farmers are currently paid less than the cost of production, and over the years have been coerced to rely upon practices and products that negatively impact animal health, while playing a significant role in the degradation of our waterways and environment. This is emphatically not the fault of the farmers; as my grandparents were, so are today’s farmers caught in a tangled web of policy and economic incentives that are not of their making, yet which drive many of their decisions.

The need to reform our state’s agricultural policies and practices extends far beyond the dairy industry. Although Vermont’s local food movement has made tremendous progress, the ability for all farmers to achieve access to land and maintain a reasonable livelihood, while supporting the health of their communities and the land, is severely and unjustly compromised. The economic incentives still point in the wrong direction — consolidation, concentration, commoditization, exploitation of cheap labor and exporting of products and wealth. These incentives, coupled with policies that too often disadvantage community-scale food production, ensure that Vermont’s local food offerings remain unaffordable to a wide swath of our population. And as goes viable, accessible community-scale production, so goes the vibrant, diversified farms that once defined and nurtured Vermont’s rural landscape, fed our communities, and invigorated our economies.

Regenerative agriculture is a term meant to describe agricultural and food-production practices that return more to the land, community and farmer than they extract. Often the term is associated with improved grazing and cropping methods that grow and protect rather than deplete topsoil, in the process sequestering carbon, increasing water retention capacity (critical in the context of massive flooding events like hurricanes Irene and Sandy), and creating wildlife habitat.

KEEP READING ON VTDIGGER

Unlikely Allies Seek to Make Vermont’s Milk the Cream of the Industry

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Author: Alicia Freese | Published: February 22, 2017 

An improbable coalition is calling for dramatic changes to the state’s dairy industry. Former agriculture secretary Roger Allbee has joined forces with three longtime environmental activists to argue that depressed milk prices, the need to reduce water pollution, and uncertainty about trade and migrant labor at the federal level present a unique opportunity to reinvigorate Vermont dairy farming.

“A perfect storm is brewing,” Allbee told the House Agriculture and Forestry Committee earlier this month. “Vermont has the rare opportunity of helping rescue its largest agricultural industry and to plot a future agriculture [system] for the state that is uniquely Vermont.”

The goal: to develop a set of environmental and ethical standards for dairy farms and build a made-in-Vermont brand that would bring farmers a premium price for their milk. Farms would have to meet those requirements — which could go above and beyond using organic practices — to qualify for using the state seal.

Requirements could include providing a livable wage and decent housing to farmworkers, allowing cows to graze on grassland, using non-GMO corn, forgoing pesticides and synthetic fertilizer, and cultivating carbon-rich soil. State financial incentives would encourage, rather than force, farms to make the transition.

“Our model is broken,” said Allbee, though he added: “I recognize that all dairy farmers cannot go organic.”

In addition to making its pitch to the legislature, the loose alliance of activists is meeting with government officials, writing op-eds and pressuring Vermont’s largest milk customers, which rely on conventional milk.

The Green Mountain State’s conventional dairy farmers have struggled for decades. Unlike farmstead cheese, milk is a commodity. Consumers don’t differentiate Vermont milk from that produced in Wisconsin or Idaho. So farmers here are subject to the price volatility of an international market and to increasing competition from larger farms able to produce cheaper milk. Vermont currently has 838 dairy farms, down 158 from five years ago, according to the Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets. The number of cows declined by 4,000, to 130,000, during the same time period.

Persistently low prices have further squeezed Vermont’s farmers in recent years. Milk has been selling for less than what it costs to produce, and a federal price insurance program has failed to provide much relief. At the same time, farmers are under mounting pressure to reduce water pollution as the state launches a concerted effort to clean up Lake Champlain and other waterways. Runoff of manure and fertilizer from farms contributes roughly 40 percent of the phosphorous contaminating the waters.

KEEP READING ON SEVEN DAYS 

NYS Lawmaker Introduces Carbon Farming Tax Credit Bill

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Author: Allison Dunne | Published: February 15, 2017

A New York state Assemblywoman has introduced legislation on carbon farming that she says is the first of its kind. The idea is to promote environmentally friendly farming practices while, at the same time, putting money back into the pockets of farmers.

Democrat Didi Barrett has sponsored a bill that creates a carbon farming tax credit. Barrett, who represents portions of Columbia and Dutchess Counties, says the plan will give farmers a new tax break while helping the state reach its climate change goals.

“This would make New York state the first in the country,” Barrett says. “And I’m very excited about something that really is a win-win for our environment and for our farmers and have New York be the lead on it.”

The 2014 Farm Bill gave USDA authority to provide technical assistance to farmers and land owners in support of their response to climate change. Barrett says that while other states like California have also begun to develop programs with similar aims, New York’s carbon farming tax credit would be the first of its kind to create a tax break for farmers who use climate-smart methods. Barrett says she had been speaking with farmers over the past few years about whether they thought such a tax credit would be beneficial.

“In continuing this conversation, in the midst of one of them, I said, do you think that if we created a tax credit for practices that put carbon back in the soil and obviously therefore take it out of the atmosphere that farmers would find that attractive,” says Barrett.

And these conversations led to her crafting the bill. Barrett, who sits on both the Assembly’s agriculture and environmental conservation committees, says there are items that still need to be worked out, such as metrics, or figuring out how to measure carbon in the soil. She says metrics on the USDA web site are a good place to start.

“What we need to work on next is really figuring out how we measure the changes,” says Barrett. “At one point, you start, and then you measure what the carbon content of the soil is, and then, after a particular cycle, measure again to see the change and the increase, and then develop a tax credit based on that.”

KEEP READING ON WAMC

Food Security, Forests at Risk Under Trump’s USDA

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Author: Bobby Magill | Published: February 7, 2017 

U.S. food security, forest health, and the ability of farmers to respond to climate change are all at risk if President’s Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Department of Agriculture brings climate change skepticism to the agency, agricultural researchers and environmental law experts say.

That concern takes root not only in Trump’s own statements scoffing at climate policy, but also in the words and actions of his nominee for Agriculture secretary — former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, who in 2007 resorted to prayer as a strategy to deal with a severe drought Georgia was enduring.

“Snowstorms, hurricanes, and tornadoes have been around since the beginning of time, but now they want us to accept that all of it is the result of climate change,” Perdue, whose Senate confirmation hearing has not yet been scheduled, wrote in a 2014 National Review column. “It’s become a running joke among the public, and liberals have lost all credibility when it comes to climate science because their arguments have become so ridiculous and so obviously disconnected from reality.”

In fact, the science of human-caused climate change is far from a running joke.

Established climate science shows that greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are quickly warming the planet, leading to melting polar ice caps, rising seas and more frequent extreme weather. Sixteen of the world’s 17 hottest years on record have all occurred since 2000 — a level of global warming leading to more frequent, more intense and more deadly heat waves and extreme drought.

Though climate models are less certain about the role of global warming in hurricanes and tornadoes, they suggest that hurricane intensity will increase as the atmosphere warms. Major hurricanes are already becoming more common in the Atlantic, and landfalling typhoons have become more intense in the Pacific, threatening millions of lives in coastal cities.

The agriculture industry is responsible for about 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. If confirmed, the decisions Perdue will make will influence whether farms shrink their carbon footprint and how farms and forests are managed to respond to climate-related disasters.Responding to climate change is a key mission of the USDA, which is America’s chief supporter of agriculture research, forestry and rural development. The agency funds millions of dollars of research at land grant universities across the country such as Cornell, Clemson and Texas A&M to help farmers learn the risks they face from a world that has been largely warmed by pollution from carbon emissions.

The USDA’s climate programs extend far beyond farms. As America’s largest forest manager, Perdue will determine the direction of the science conducted by the U.S. Forest Service and whether some of America’s most carbon-dense and diverse forests are clear cut for timber harvesting or managed to sustain and blunt the impacts of climate change.

“Just about every activity that the USDA regulates is likely to impact climate policy,” said Mark Squillace, a natural resources law professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder. “Forests and soils store vast amounts of carbon. When forests are logged or when they burn, much of that stored carbon is released into the atmosphere. Crop farming also contributes to climate change by releasing large quantities of nitrous oxides, much of it from fertilizers, and animal farming contributes vast amounts of methane especially from ruminant animals.”

KEEP READING ON CLIMATE CENTRAL 

Climate Change, Resilience, and the Future of Food

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Author: Laura Lengnick | Published: February 3, 2017 

The United States food system has proven remarkably adaptable over the last 150 years, producing an abundant supply of food, feed, and fiber crops for national and international markets amidst dynamic social change, and despite dramatic natural resource variability across North America.

The story of American agriculture’s rise to world class status is usually told with technology in the hero’s role. In the typical story, the major “revolutions” in the industrialization of American agriculture came about as the result of one or more technological innovations—such as mechanical harvesters, hybrid corn and more feed-efficient livestock, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and genetic engineering. As awareness of the current and potential costs of climate change to agriculture and food systems increase, this singular focus on technological solutions continues through widespread enthusiasm for sustainable intensification.

Public investment: The true hero of the story

Rarely acknowledged is the real, underlying reason for the success of industrial agriculture: the continuous intended and unintended investment of public resources to develop, support, promote, and enable the industrial food system. These resources have taken many forms:

  • Financial resources such as direct and indirect payments designed to stabilize production, recover from disasters, and reduce environmental harms
  • Public financing of the education, research and development programs and institutions that serve the agricultural-industrial complex
  • Unintended human resource subsidies as farm families struggle to balance the demands of full-time farming with full-time off-farm work to maintain family well-being in the face of steadily declining farm profitability
  • Unintended natural resource subsidies in the form of degraded soil, water, and air quality, biodiversity, and ecosystem services
  • Unintended social resource subsidies in the form of degraded health and well-being of rural communities both at home and abroad

Although the costs of industrial food and the benefits of sustainable food systems are widely recognized, and despite new evidence that the global industrial food system is uniquely vulnerable to climate change and other 21st-century challenges, national and international agricultural policy continues to support public investment in an unsustainable global industrial food system.

KEEP READING ON UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS

Reforming our Land Management, Economy and Agricultural Practices

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Authors: Graham Unagnst-Rufenach and Aaron Guman| Published: February 2, 2017 

Regenerative agriculture allows us to produce food, shelter, medicines  and other products needed to sustain human life while simultaneously regenerating ecological health and the communities, economies and cultures associated with the land.

How does regenerative agriculture work?

Soils and aboveground biomass, such as trees and shrubs, represent one of the greatest opportunities for pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it into long term, stable storage known as a carbon “sink.” Agroforestry, or agricultural systems which incorporate trees and shrubs, have the highest potential for sequestering carbon while providing other ecosystem benefits.

Storing carbon in the soil and maintaining perennial living soil cover (trees, pasture, grazing animals, etc.) brings a host of benefits, including: increased soil fertility and biological activity, improved wildlife and pollinator habitat, less vulnerability to disease, increased crop yield, increased drought and flood resilience, and increased water-holding and filtration capacity. A 1% increase in soil organic matter over an acre of land allows it to hold 20,000 additional gallons of water, which means less water, and any pollutants carried with it, running off downstream.

Regenerative agriculture is inherently political — it recognizes historical and contemporary injustices in relationship to land and wealth access and distribution, climate change, and human rights; and asserts the need for social, economic, and political — as well as agroecological —  equity and transformation.

Regenerative Agriculture in Vermont

Regenerative agriculture is site, region, and community specific, it meets people and landscapes where they are. This often means collaboratively assessing how we can: 1. mitigate existing problems, 2. adapt to climate change and, 3. implement regenerative practices to produce desired outcomes. Currently there is substantial policy and financial support for mitigation efforts on large farms. However, there is little focus on supporting and funding adaptation and transformation of these farms or our most actively growing agricultural sector in Vermont: small diversified farms.

A transition to regenerative practices

A family we work with wanted to transition the pasture-land they were moving onto into regenerative grazing management. It had long been overgrazed: cattle had been allowed access to the same parts of the land for weeks at a time, wet areas were deeply pock marked and spread out by hoof impact, the forage was stunted and eaten down nearly to the ground, and unfavorable species had begun to dominate parts of the pasture.

KEEP READING ON THE BRIDGE 

Regenerating Public Health: Beyond Obama and Trump

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Author: Ronnie Cummins | Published: February 5, 2017

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As evidenced by the 2016 primary and general elections, Americans–Democrats, Republicans, Greens, and Independents–want real change, radical change, not just “business as usual.” That’s why Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) nearly won the Democratic Party nomination in 2016 with his call for a “Revolution,” including Medicare for All, reining in Wall Street, higher taxes on corporate profits, an end to wars in the Middle East, and free tuition for students at public colleges. Polls consistently indicated that had Sanders survived the dirty tricks of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, and actually won the Democratic Party nomination, he could have defeated Trump by a significant margin.

On the Republican side of the partisan divide, 63 million (mainly white),bitterly dissatisfied Americans cast their votes against Hillary Clinton and for Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed revolutionary, who promised to “Make America Great Again,” by reducing taxes, and by raising the living standards of everyday Americans. Trump’s platform included putting an end to Obamacare and providing a more effective and affordable system of healthcare by devolving power to the states.

Since his inauguration, Trump and his minions have unfortunately declared war on the majority of Americans with a divisive, indeed alarming, series of sexist, racist, authoritarian and homophobic policy pronouncements and executive orders. After declaring he would “drain the swamp” of lobbyists and special interests, Trump has instead hypocritically put forth the nominations of corporate millionaires, billionaires, Wall Street insiders, militarists and climate deniers to his Cabinet, along with an anti-abortion extremist to the Supreme Court, and has enacted a series of executive decrees on immigration, environmental pollution, and pipelines that have brought millions of protesters out into the streets.

According to the well-respected Institute on Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP),

“Trump has issued instructions to effectively gag government scientists, thus threatening continuity and public accountability in research, and is preparing to gut regulations across multiple sectors that were designed in the public interest. He is building a cabinet of powerful millionaires and billionaires, some of whom oppose the very purpose that their agencies are mandated to serve. He is perpetuating the idea that recognition of climate change is subject to a belief system rather than to scientific evidence. He is attempting to reverse the social-, economic- and environmental-achievement and promise of renewable energy. –IATP newsletter Feb. 4, 2017.

One of the most pressing crises we face, a major topic in the 2016 elections, is our rapidly deteriorating public health and healthcare system. See the linked article and video at the end of this article. Unfortunately, neither Establishment Democrats (Clinton et al) nor Republicans (Trump) appear ready to “bite the hand that feeds them” (Big Pharma, the American Medical Association, insurance companies, junk food conglomerates, corporate agribusiness, chemical polluters) and offer a real solution, in terms of effective and affordable healthcare and public policy that address the underlying causes of rampant disease and sickness, not just the symptoms.

The root causes of the world’s most expensive and ineffective system of healthcare—the U.S. healthcare system—are not only medical errors (failing to focus on prevention and nutrition for example) and malpractice (the third leading cause of death in America), but also the self-destructive lifestyle choices or addictions (junk food, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and lack of exercise) of the majority of the population. The everyday behavior of consumers in our Fast Food nation, compounded by the routine “profit-at-any-cost” contamination of our environment, have not only degenerated public health, but have also raised healthcare costs ($3.3 trillion per year and rising) to the point where they are threatening to bankrupt our entire economic system.

We literally cannot afford to provide universal healthcare for all as long as our medical model is focused on treating the evermore serious and widespread sicknesses of the body politic (for example obesity and diabetes) rather than the underlying causes. However, with the right preventive and holistic approach, we could easily afford Medicare for All–and it would cost much less for both consumers and employers than what we are spending now.

We do need socialized medicine, accessible to everyone regardless of their income level. But we need universal healthcare based upon a fundamentally different model, whereby we stop just treating the symptoms of our degenerating public health and start treating the causes.

U.S. healthcare costs in 2016 averaged $10,345 per person for a total of $3.35 trillion dollars, a full 18 percent of the entire economy, twice as much as any other industrialized country. Healthcare costs are projected to grow at 6 percent a year over the next decade, eventually likely bankrupting not only millions of consumers, but the entire federal government.

Whatever your opinion on the merits and drawbacks of the so-called Affordable Care Act, Trump and Congress appear poised to put an end to Obamacare. Millions of Trump supporters say that one of the main reasons they voted for Trump and the Republicans was to get rid of Obamacare. The ACA, launched with great fanfare by Obama and Congressional Democrats, supposedly to make quality healthcare available and affordable to all Americans, became increasingly unpopular once it proved incapable of taming Big Pharma’s insatiable lust for profits. As costs and deductibles rose, and once people realized they were forced by federal law to purchase health insurance, no matter what the cost, Obamacare lost support.

Although millions of previously uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions or low incomes have undoubtedly benefited from Obamacare (along with Big Pharma and insurance companies whose profits increased because the law made it mandatory to purchase health insurance), it looks like the ACA will now be replaced by a system of taxpayer-funded, but state-administered block grants and health savings accounts.

Trumpcare, in most states, will likely lead to reduced benefits for low-income individuals or families, and make it harder for the tens of millions of Americans with chronic and often serious pre-existing conditions to afford health insurance. At the same time it will likely provide tax advantages for large businesses and upper-income Americans. On the positive side, from the standpoint of natural health consumers, Trumpcare may indeed offer more choice for middle- and upper-income consumers on how they spend the money in their health savings accounts, including more flexibility on vaccine choice and expanded coverage for natural health remedies, supplements and practices, including naturopathy and homeopathy.

Meanwhile polls indicate that more than 60 percent of Americans are not that enthusiastic about either Obamacare or Trumpcare. Most consumers say they would prefer a Medicare for All program of universal healthcare paid for by employers and individuals—with the wealthy and the corporations paying their fair share. Under the popular Medicare for All plan proposed by Bernie Sanders, employers would pay a 6.2-percent health tax and workers a 2.2-percent tax to pay for healthcare for all, with an average saving in healthcare costs of $5,000 for middle class families, savings of $9,000 per employee for businesses and $6 trillion in healthcare cost savings over a decade for the entire country.

But with the Trump Administration and the current make-up of Congress and state legislatures, don’t hold your breath waiting for a Bernie Sanders-style Medicare for All program. If we’re ever going to see universal healthcare for all with a focus on prevention, natural health and consumer choice–what we call Regenerative Health–we will  have to elect a Brand New Congress  along with a brand new slate of radical-minded local and state elected political officials, what Bernie Sanders supporters call “Our Revolution.”

In the meantime, welcome to Degeneration Nation. Swimming in a toxic soup of 90,000 basically unregulated industrial and agricultural chemicals–carcinogens, neurotoxins, pesticides, hormone disruptors, immune suppressors, excitotoxins, GMOs. Worn down by corporate junk food, tainted consumer products, air and water pollution, incessant advertising, infectious disease, synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, dangerous vaccines, cigarette smoke, and alcohol. Zapped 24/7 with electromagnetic radiation. Stressed out by poverty and economic insecurity, fear of crime, rampant consumerism, and a murderous work pace.

A growing majority of Americans are chronically sick and dispirited

Ignoring, in fact profiting off of this public health crisis, mainstream medical practitioners, the corporate media, and elected public officials continue to ignore or cover-up the toxic, business-as-usual, roots of Degeneration Nation.

Corrupt politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike support a powerful Medical Industrial Pharmaceutical Complex that offers expensive, yet mostly ineffective, drugs and treatment to allay our growing public health crisis. Then they proceed to collect their payoffs in the form of campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies, and HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations).

A recent case in point is the rejection by the U.S. Senate of a commonsense bill put forward by Bernie Sanders to require U.S. government, taxpayer-funded health care programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration) to bargain with Big Pharma to lower prescription drug prices and to allow the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. Not only did Senate Republicans vote against this bill, but they were provided a margin of victory by the support of 13 Democratic Senators. And of course President Trump, notwithstanding his recent rhetoric about how Big Pharma is gouging us, said nothing.

Big Pharma spends more on lobbying than any other industry in the United States, according to the Center for Public Integrity. In addition, Big Pharma feeds the insatiable appetite of the mainstream media, spending more than $5 billion dollars a year on advertising, including advertising pharmaceutical drugs, a practice banned in every other industrialized nation except New Zealand. Last but not least, U.S. doctors make more money than any other medical practitioners in the world, though they typically pay a steep price in terms of a 70-hour workweek, skyrocketing malpractice insurance, and indentured servitude to Big Pharma, insurance companies and giant hospitals.

The Emperor of Degeneration Nation has no clothes, but very few of our so-called political leaders, other than Bernie Sanders, are talking seriously about what to do about it.

American consumers and employers will spend over three trillion dollars this year on health insurance, pharmaceutical drugs, hospitals, and medical bills, yet we remain–mentally and physically–among the unhealthiest people on Earth. Forty-eight percent of U.S. men and 38% of women can now look forward to getting cancer. A third of our children suffer from chronic disease, eight percent suffer from serious food allergies, 10% from asthma, 17% are diagnosed with learning or behavior disabilities, almost two percent from autism, while a third of low-income preschool kids are already overweight or obese. Heart disease, diabetes, mental illness, cancer, and obesity are spiraling out-of-control among all sectors of the population.

The fundamental causes of most of our chronic health problems are not genetic or inherited, but rather derive from couch potato/commuter lifestyles; over consumption of highly processed, high-cholesterol, nutritionally deficient, and contaminated factory-farmed and industrialized foods; and an increasingly polluted, stressful, and toxic environment.

These, of course, are problems that even the most expensive prescription drugs and high-tech medical procedures cannot cure. Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come. Within a few years, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation and others, America’s health care costs will soar beyond four trillion dollars annually, bankrupting Medicare and millions of American families and businesses.  Unless we quickly change our priorities from “maintaining” our Degeneration Nation to universally preventing disease and promoting overall wellness–including cleaning up our food supply and environment–America’s health crisis will become terminal.

With millions of Americans mentally or physically debilitated, permanently hooked on the world’s most expensive prescription drugs, Big Pharma, HMOs, and insurance tycoons rake in billions.

According to Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, in 2002:

“The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion). Over the past two decades the pharmaceutical industry has [become] a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, [using] its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself.”

Keep in mind these figures are from 14 years ago. Currently big pharma rakes in over $500 billion in revenues in the U.S .and Canada alone.

In order to bring about radical change (Medicare for All with a major emphasis on prevention and natural health practices), we will have to put the “fear of the grassroots” into the minds of Congress and the nation’s several hundred thousand elected public officials. But we will only be able to accomplish this if can move beyond partisan tunnel-vision politics and Big Pharma industrial medicine.

The critics of corporate healthcare and Big Pharma must stop quibbling. It’s time to close ranks, and mobilize a massive united front to support the progressive Medicare for All healthcare movement, representing the 40 million Americans with no or inadequate health insurance, the 20 million with pre-existing conditions, and the 60 million more who simply can’t afford Obamacare or Trump healthcare prices. These 120 million dissatisfied and economically stressed out Americans need to be reinforced by an army of radicals and libertarians, the 50 million alternative heath consumers who have rejected Big Pharma’s trillion-dollar drug and health maintenance scam altogether. Unless we bring together liberals, radicals, and natural health advocates, and mobilize this new majority, around a new model of public health focused on disease prevention and wellness promotion, rather than so-called “health maintenance,” we will fail.

The toxic side effects of Degeneration Nation are poisoning the body politic. With much of the population fixated on their personal or family’s health and psychological problems, worried about losing their jobs or their health coverage, doped up on prescription drugs or alcohol, and, for many, compensating for their alienating jobs with rampant consumerism, corrupt politicians and corporations run amuck.

National and global mega-crises–climate change, environmental destruction, poverty, unemployment, and endless war–steadily grow worse. Out-gunned and out-maneuvered, public interest organizations have defensively barricaded themselves in their respective single-issue silos–competing rather than cooperating, seldom if ever making the crucial links between food, environment, lifestyle, work, tax policy, military spending and health. Intimidated and/or bought off by Big Pharma and the medical industrial complex, few of the nation’s elected public officials dare talk about the obvious solution to our national health crisis: universal health care with a preventive and holistic focus.

We need universal, publicly funded healthcare because millions of sick and disadvantaged Americans are suffering and dying. We need universal healthcare because Big Pharma, HMOs and insurance companies are gouging consumers for $3.35 trillion dollars a year, profitably “maintaining” their illnesses, rather than curing them, steadily moving the nation along a trajectory that, combined with out-of-control military spending and corporate tax evasion, will eventually bankrupt the economy.

Can we afford universal healthcare with a focus on prevention and wellness?

In every industrialized country in the world, except for the U.S, medical care is considered a basic human right, alongside food and shelter, which a civilized society must provide for all. Of course it’s very difficult for a corporate-indentured government like the U.S. to afford universal healthcare, if big pharmaceutical companies, for-profit hospitals and health insurers are allowed to jack up their profit margins at will, while the rich and the corporations are allowed to evade taxes. Healthcare reform in the U.S. must be coupled with price controls on drugs and medical costs, as well as tax reform, whereby the corporations and the wealthy are forced to pay their fair share of federal taxes, including a transaction tax on Wall Street speculators. Taking the profits out of healthcare and eliminating the vast army of bureaucrats who administer our current for-profit healthcare system in favor of turning over responsibility to our federal Social Security and Medicaid administration will save us $360 billion dollars in administration costs.

And of course slashing our bloated military budget will bring in hundreds of billions of dollars, plenty of money to pay for every American to be enrolled in Medicare for All and receive the medical care they choose (including natural health products and practitioners) and need, and plenty of money to start changing our food and farming and land-use system from one that makes people sick, to one that makes people healthy.

In the U.S. corporations paid almost 40 percent of all federal taxes in 1943. Now they pay less than 10 percent. In 1960, millionaires were taxed at the rate of 90 percent. Now the top rate for millionaires and billionaires is 35 percent. Trump plans to reduce this tax rate on the rich and large corporations even more. Putting an end to this institutionalized tax evasion is a prerequisite for being able to afford publicly funded universal healt care–without raising taxes for the middle class, the working class and low-income communities.

Regenerating public health

To repeat: Federally funded Medicare for All healthcare is not enough. We need non-profit universal healthcare that promotes wellness and prevents people from getting sick–before they end up in the hospital or become permanently addicted to expensive prescription drugs with dangerous side effects. Simply giving everyone access to Big Pharma’s overpriced drugs, and corporate hospitals’ profit-at-any-cost tests and treatment, will result in little more than soaring healthcare costs, with uninsured and insured alike remaining sick or becoming even sicker.

To regenerate and cure Degeneration Nation and revitalize the body politic, we need to connect the dots between food, diet and health; exercise and health; exposure to toxics and health; stress reduction and health; and poverty and health.

As 75 million organic consumers and alternative health consumers can attest, complementary and preventive medicine, utilizing natural herbs, minerals, natural vitamins and supplements, organic whole foods, lifestyle changes, and holistic healing practices are safe, affordable and effective. Preventive healthcare, natural medicine, and proper nutrition have been linked to a broad range of health and social benefits, including disease reduction, increased academic performance, and lower healthcare costs.

Of course we still need conventional medicine and practitioners: hospitals, diagnostic tests, surgeons, and specialists, as well as preventive and holistic healers. I am a vocal advocate for organic food and integrative medicine, but if I suffer a heart attack, break my leg or get shot in an anti-war demonstration, I want to be taken to a well-equipped and staffed hospital, not to a health food store or my local acupuncturist. But after my hospital treatment, I don’t want to become a prescription drug junky or be driven into bankruptcy court by a $100,000+ hospital bill.

Millions of Americans currently have no health insurance whatsoever, while 50 million or more are woefully underinsured. Meanwhile Big Pharma and profit-obsessed HMOs and hospitals are focused mainly on selling you overpriced (often hazardous) prescription drugs, running expensive tests, and keeping you on permanent health maintenance, rather than preventing and/or curing our most common ailments such as cancer, hypertension, heart disease, lung problems, diabetes, obesity, stroke, and mental illness. Rampant medical malpractice and the failure of conventional medicine to address our serious ailments is the primary reason that 50 million alternative health consumers are taking matters into their own hands and paying $50 billion dollars a year out of their own pockets for nutritional supplements, herbal remedies and natural health practitioners.

Even worse than just expensively maintaining–rather than curing–chronic illnesses, the collateral damage of Big Pharma’s business-as-usual approach can only be described as catastrophic. As an AMA (American Medical Association) publication admitted a decade ago, drug-related “problems” annually kill, 198,815 people, put 8.8 million in hospitals, and account for up to 28 percent of hospital admissions.” Over the past decade this carnage has increased. Newsweek magazine, among others, has reported that side effects from prescription drugs are now the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.

As medical analyst Gary Null warned almost a decade ago:

“A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that. the number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million, the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections is 20 million. The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million.

The problem is clear. The solution is obvious. The multi-trillion-dollar life-or-death question is whether we can overcome our partisan and sectarian divisions and mobilize the grassroots power of the majority of Americans who are sick and tired of living in Degeneration Nation. Can we heal the perennial split between proponents of conventional medicine and the alternative health consumer movement? Can progressives and natural health advocates reach out to the economically disadvantaged and stressed-out majority to create a massive grassroots pressure that will literally force our currently indentured politicians to “do the right thing?” Can we figure out how to change people’s self-destructive eating and lifestyle decisions, while still respecting individual liberty?

The time for action is now.

It’s time to overthrow Big Pharma’s control over our government, our health and our pocketbooks. It’s time to regenerate public health and the body politic. It’s time for a Regeneration Revolution.

For more Information: Surprising Links: How Big Banks Manipulate and Influence Your Health