The Regenerative Agriculture Solution: A Revolutionary Approach to Building Soil, Creating Climate Resilience, and Supporting Human and Planetary Health by André Leu & Ronnie Cummins

Is it possible that the solution to the global climate emergency lies in a "waste" agricultural product?

The best-kept secret in today's world is that solutions to some of our most pressing issues--food insecurity, deforestation, overgrazing, water scarcity, rural poverty, forced migration--lie in adopting, improving, and scaling up organic and regenerative agriculture best practices.

The Regenerative Agriculture Solution starts with the story of how two brothers--Jose and Gilberto Flores--are at the leading edge of this approach, pioneering the use of the previously discarded leaves of the prodigious agave plant to regenerate agricultural soils, reduce erosion, and improve water capture.

When Ronnie Cummins, the cofounder of Organic Consumer Association (OCA) and Regeneration International, met the Flores brothers in 2019 and witnessed their revolutionary agave agroforestry system, he knew they were onto something important.

Cummins had spent decades studying the potential and pitfalls of organic and regenerative agriculture and knew best practices when he saw them. He started to write a book about Flores's brother and other visionary people, such as Dr Vandana Shiva, Allan Savory, and John Liu, who started landscape-scale regeneration projects. The scientific data was even more convincing, suggesting that these projects--and others like it--could revolutionize how we understand the climate catastrophe.

Sadly, Cummins passed away in April 2023, in the midst of working on the book. Not to leave this work unfinished, Ronnie's widow and OCA cofounder, Rose, called on their friend, colleague, and collaborator, Regeneration International's cofounder André Leu, to complete the work and place the Flores brothers' breakthroughs in the broader context of regenerative agriculture solutions to the world's many interlocking ecological crises.

The result is The Regenerative Agriculture Solution, a book that shows how regenerating our forests, rangelands, and farming ecosystems can cool our planet, restore the climate, and enrich our communities.

André Leu is the International Director of Regeneration International, an organization he co-founded in 2015 with Dr. Vandana Shiva, Ronnie Cummins, Dr. Hans Herren, and Steve Rye, and which has now grown to 540 partners in 75 countries, advancing projects in agroecology, permaculture, AMP grazing, agroforestry, and biological, organic, and ecological agriculture. Dr. Leu holds a Doctor of Science in Environmental and Agricultural Systems and is an Adjunct Professor of regenerative agriculture at South Seas University. His books include Growing Life, Poisoning Our Children, and The Myths of Safe Pesticides. Dr. Leu and his wife, Julia, live on their organic tropical fruit farm in Daintree, Australia.

Ronnie Cummins was the cofounder and director of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), a nonprofit, US-based network of more than two million consumers dedicated to safeguarding organic standards and promoting a healthy, just, and regenerative system of food, farming, and commerce. Cummins also served on the steering committee of Regeneration International and OCA's Mexican affiliate, Vía Orgánica. He was the coauthor of The Truth About COVID-19 and author of Grassroots Rising and Genetically Engineered Food.

Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, a leader in the International Forum on Globalisation, and of the Slow Food Movement. Director of Navdanya and of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and a tireless crusader for farmers', peasants', and women's rights, she is the author and editor of a score of influential books, among them Oneness vs. the 1%; Making Peace with the Earth; Soil Not Oil; Globalization's New Wars; Seed Sovereignty, Food Security: Women in the Vanguard; and Who Really Feeds the World?

Shiva is the recipient of over twenty international awards, including the Right Livelihood Award (1993); the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic (1998); the Horizon 3000 Award (Austria, 2001); the John Lennon-Yoko Ono Grant for Peace (2008); the Save the World Award (2009); the Sydney Peace Prize (2010); the Calgary Peace Prize (2011); and the Thomas Merton Award (2011). She was the Fukuoka Grand Prize Laureate in 2012.