Community Garden Magazine Issue Two October 2015 | Page 25

We need a message of hope . . .
Dear Organic Consumer,
I’ve just returned from an inspirational trip to India. I went on
this journey (which my fellow traveler, Vandana Shiva, refers
to as a “soil pilgrimage”) to celebrate the International Year
of the Soil.
But I also undertook this journey to see firsthand what many
Indian farmers are up against. And also because I believe
that the crises we face today—hunger, poverty, chronic
illness, drought, floods—demand that we come up with
solutions that we can adapt to every region of the world, and
execute on a global scale.
Tomorrow is World Food Day. It is also the day we will publicly launch, in conjunction with
other international leaders and organizations, a new project: Regeneration International.
What better day—the day on which the International Year of the Soil and World Food Day intersect—
to remind world leaders and policymakers that without healthy soil, there are no healthy farms.
Without healthy farms, there is no healthy food. Without healthy food, there are no healthy people.
Without healthy farms, food and people, there are no healthy local economies.
And, as it turns out, without healthy soil, there is no healthy climate.
The world's best climate scientists warn that even if we miraculously achieve zero emissionstomorrow,
on a global scale, it would take about 1,000 years to get back to the magic "safe" number of 350 ppm
carbon in the atmosphere.
That could be too late.
We need a message of hope to counter such dire climate predictions. We need a message of
hope for those people, all over the world, who don’t worry about global warming