A platform of California Climate and Agriculture Network would move billions of dollars into the hands of farmers and ranchers willing to adopt regenerative food and farming systems.

By April M. Short

When it comes to climate change contributors—like greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water pollution—large-scale farmers and ranchers are among the worst culprits in the U.S. and worldwide. However, these very farmers and ranchers could wind up leading the way out of the ecological nightmare humans have created, and toward an equitable, livable future.

“Farmers and ranchers—with policies and funding that help them take risks and try new approaches—can make the transition to climate resilience,” says Renata Brillinger. She is co-founder and executive director of the California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN), a coalition working since 2009 to advance state and federal policies that support sustainable and organic agriculture to catalyze climate solutions.

“These are ‘no-regrets’ solutions that offer many environmental benefits while improving the health and profitability of farmers and rural communities,” she says. “Investments made now will return huge dividends over time.”

Brillinger is referencing the solutions proposed by the report, “A Climate Platform for California Agriculture,” comprising two parts—State of the State and Tools for Transformation. CalCAN compiled the platform to outline the current ecological issues being faced by agriculture, the enormous potential of the industry to bring about the changes and solutions needed to combat the impacts of agriculture on climate change, and the specific channels of funding necessary for these solutions. The report calls for $1 billion to be invested per year in sustainable, regenerative agriculture in the state.

The platform, guided by a panel of 16 multidisciplinary reviewers, is the result of “a tremendous amount of consultation and listening,” Brillinger says. More than 60 farmers, researchers, agriculture professionals, and advocates weighed in with creative solutions and insights. She says the most rewarding part of the project has been this “community of thought leaders working on multi-beneficial, nature-based approaches to growing food.”

At its outset, the platform’s website invites the state’s “policymakers, journalists and stakeholders” to get involved to support climate-resilient agriculture systems, stating that the platform “is a call to action to work together towards a climate-resilient future.”

A Call for Urgency

As demonstrated by the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020, our globalized food systems are already fragile and frayed. Scientists agree that climate change will only continue to worsen, which will cause significant additional strain on our food systems. Experts at the World Economic Forum predict that climate change and the problems it creates, including food system collapse, will be the number one crisis humanity faces in the coming decade.

Brillinger says climate change is already “creating widespread disruptions in our food and farming system.”

“Farmers and ranchers face unprecedented challenges with increasingly scarce water, extreme heat, flooding and wildfire events, and unpredictable weather and pest patterns. Even experienced farmers are struggling to stay in business and new farmers face not only climate-related challenges but also a lack of access to affordable, secure land,” she says, noting that this combined with ongoing structural and discriminatory barriers, most heavily impacts farmers of color and communities that are already struggling the most.

“Climate-related crop losses are on the rise, driving up food prices and contributing to an increase in the number of people who are food insecure and hungry,” she says. “Farmworkers are on the front lines, exposed to unhealthy air and facing the reality of working on more dangerously hot days. They and their families and communities are among California’s most economically vulnerable people and also often lack access to healthy food, safe drinking water, and homes that are affordable, air-conditioned, and energy efficient.”

The high stakes of the moment, she says, call for prioritizing an urgent reenvisioning of the way we grow food.

Brillinger says while California has made some relatively significant progress to incentivize farmers and ranchers to adopt practices that benefit the environment, “there is a long way to go to reach the state’s various 2030 climate goals. The [platform] is a call to act with more urgency and ambition.”

About 15 years ago, CalCAN came about as a result of the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32), a landmark piece of legislation that established a 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target.

Brillinger says much of the money invested in green solutions following AB 32 focused on solutions in “renewable energy, electric vehicles, and projects in urban areas,” explaining that CalCAN came together as a coalition to make the case for public investments in sustainable agriculture.

Over the years, CalCAN has had notable success; Brillinger notes that since 2009 California has developed various grant programs to fund healthy soils and water conservation practices, alternative manure management technologies that reduce methane emissions from dairies, and a farmland conservation program to limit greenhouse gas-intensive urban sprawl.

Brillinger says that between 2017 and 2023, California invested about $800 million in sustainable agriculture, which she notes is “a good start but insufficient.” She says to date, the money to support sustainable agriculture in California has come from the state’s cap-and-trade program, the general fund, and some from a natural resources bond measure.

In 2023, under the Biden administration, “the federal government finally started to fund agricultural climate solutions, notably through the Inflation Reduction Act that includes $20 billion over five years,” Brillinger says.

In one of the sections of the platform called, “Funding the Transition,” CalCAN delves into the funding sources mentioned above, as well as additional sources that could make up the $1 billion per year the organization has determined necessary to implement strategies outlined in the platform’s report.

“This may sound like a lot of money, so as a reference, consider that California spends about $1.1 billion per year on residential energy efficiency, $3.7 billion on wildfire resilience, and $2 billion on drought and flood management,” Brillinger points out. “We see the money coming from a variety of public, private, and philanthropic sources, including the sources described above that are already being tapped.”

Brillinger shared three examples of the potential funding sources:

1. The state legislature is in the final stages of deliberating over a multi-billion dollar climate bond measure that will likely be on the November 2024 ballot—for three years, we have been part of a coalition advocating that it should include $3.7 billion for climate-smart agriculture, farmworker housing, and regional food infrastructure.
2. The state legislature should assess levying additional fees on fossil fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers to support research, technical assistance, and incentives that transition our farming system away from these GHG-producing inputs.
3. The federal Farm Bill reauthorization process currently underway presents opportunities to increase federal investments that benefit all farmers in the country. CalCAN is co-leading an effort to include $1.5 billion in the Farm Bill to fund alternative manure management practices, modeled on California’s successful program (more on the COWS Act here).

She says the biggest challenge in creating the platform was deciding which recommendations to include.

To “narrow the options,” Brillinger says, CalCAN used the following principles to zero in on the most effective paths to agricultural climate resilience:

Climate Health—Farms and ranches adapt to and recover from climate shocks and are net sinks for GHGs rather than net sources.

Ecological Health—Food is produced in balance with natural resources while maximizing biological diversity.

Economic Health—Farmers and ranchers are profitable and productive, and the economies of rural communities are thriving.

Farmland Health—Productive agricultural land is permanently protected and there is abundant access to land for new and racially and culturally diverse farmers.

Human Health—The people who grow our food have safe working and living conditions and adequate wages and affordable housing, and rural communities have clean air and water and healthy food.

Addressing Inequity

The platform includes more than 50 policy recommendations, a summary of which is provided by an “at-a-glance” sheet. An executive summary of the report lists the “Tools for Transformation” required to develop these policy recommendations, including a section on “Addressing Systemic Inequity.” This part, Brillinger says, is essential to the larger goal of climate resilience in agriculture because we all fare better when the poorest and most vulnerable communities are taken care of.

“In California agriculture, there can be no resilient food production without investing in the health and well-being of the predominantly low-income Latino immigrant farmworkers who plant, tend, harvest, and process our food,” she says. “A truly resilient future must be centered on farming strategies that not only have climate benefits but also improve air and water quality and the health of farmworkers, their families, and rural communities.”

Brillinger adds that it is also the government’s responsibility to “redress past harms.”

“In agriculture as in all other aspects of our society, the current realities such as who owns land and who has rights to water are the result of a historic pattern of systemic racial injustice that includes the genocide of Indigenous peoples, the exploitation of various groups of immigrant laborers, and discriminatory laws that made it difficult or impossible for farmers of color to own farmland,” she says.

“The impact of these injustices continues to this day and has resulted in a vast consolidation of land and water resources that severely limits the ability of farmers of color, farmworkers, and the next generation of small family farmers to thrive and scale up agricultural climate solutions. Our ability to address these constraints and the continued pattern of racial discrimination will determine how meaningfully and quickly we will be able to move toward a future that includes a truly equitable, healthy, and resilient food and farming system.”

Weaving Existing Solutions

Much of what the platform recommends involves connecting people across various fields of expertise, and across different focuses, and creating networks and webs of resilience. Examples of these kinds of cross-pollinating solutions, so to speak, already exist in real-life ways. For instance, Brillinger says she is excited about a network of Soil Health Hubs that began launching in California in 2023, as a result of a collaboration between the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts and the Carbon Cycle Institute (a nonprofit organization and member of the CalCAN coalition). One example of these networks is the North Coast Soil Hub, which connects people working toward soil health in six northern California coastal counties: Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, and Sonoma.

The idea, she says, is that an interconnected set of hubs around the state—connected to the best science, innovative growing techniques, technical expertise, and public funding sources—can bolster farmers already looking to reduce climate impacts.

Brillinger shares that CalCAN is leading a similar effort nationwide: the National Healthy Soils Policy Network, which is a group of farmer-centered organizations in 27 states working on healthy soils practices.

“As in California, this group is working on developing a network of regional hubs, each serving several states, to increase access by underserved farmers to state and federal climate and agriculture funding and programs,” she says.

Brillinger notes that Indigenous peoples have been growing food in regenerative ways for thousands of years, “while staying in balance with natural resource limits and coping with unpredictability, pests and diseases, and weather extremes.”

“They did so without the use of fossil fuel inputs or other practices common in the intensive form of agriculture that has been in use only for the past 70 years or so,” she says. “Organic and biodiverse farming systems most closely resemble these practices, and scaling them up is the best chance we have to transition to a climate resilient food system.”

: April M. Short is an editor, journalist, and documentary editor and producer. She is a co-founder of the Observatory, where she is the Local Peace Economy editor, and she is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute. Previously, she was a managing editor at AlterNet as well as an award-winning senior staff writer for Good Times, a weekly newspaper in Santa Cruz, California. Her work has been published with the San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, LA Yoga, Pressenza, the Conversation, Salon, and many other publications.

 This article was produced by Local Peace Economy, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Many people are already investing themselves in the local peace economy as they divest from the economy of war.

By April M. Short

War is not innate to humanity; it is learned culturally, and intentional systems of peace can prevent it from happening, according to anthropological research. We are living at a critical time in the history of humanity in which preventing and divesting from war are essential to our future existence—especially given the realities of the global climate crisis and the fact that the U.S. military is the worst single polluter that exists (and not even mentioning the unspeakable potential for destruction that nuclear weapons pose). If war is cultural, then we can prevent it by intentionally moving ourselves into a culture of peace. How do we do this? We begin with ourselves. We begin to break our war economy habits, and actively divest ourselves, wherever possible, from the ways in which the war economy takes hold in our lives. And we purposefully invest ourselves at the local level in what is often called the peace economy—the caring, sharing, supportive economies that already exist all around us.

The economy of war thrives on extraction and materialism, so it has—for thousands of years, and by no accident—made trite (or violently stifled) the things that are most valuable and important about living: caring; nurturing; love; art; peace; expression; and connection with nature, our bodies, and each other. The war economy, which is the overarching economic system of our times, promotes a culture that actively devalues play and community, and overly values hard work and individualism—to the grave detriment of mental and physical health. It uplifts money hoarding, competition, and the flaunting of one’s material wealth over generosity, sharing, collaboration, and appreciation. It stifles grief and asks us to harden ourselves against the expression of feeling rather than inviting us into depths of emotion where we can realize the gift of being alive in this world, together, for just a brief time.

The results of this unsustainable and unnatural lifestyle are ugly: Clear-cut, monocropped tree farms where once thrived biodiverse FernGully-esque old grove forests in the Pacific Northwest, the Amazon, and around the world; endless mining and building projects that plunder habitats, natural wonders, and Indigenous communities; worsening mental health afflictions, an opioid addiction epidemic, and soaring suicide rates; toxic chemicals and microplastics in our soils, oceans, streams, and bloodstreams that are causing irreparable damage to the planet and our bodies; people treated like criminals for experiencing homelessness, even amidst a devastating cost of living crisis; racist, militarized police murdering people in broad daylight, and often walking free even when they’re caught on camera; hustle and greed culture and the agony that comes with living a daily grind; so much unnecessary loneliness and stress… and this list could go on and on.

But a movement is building from the commons to break with these war economy ways and replenish ways of being that are actually livable. Around the world, there are projects, people, and organizations creating solutions to the problems of our times. They are actively helping in divesting from the war economy in powerful ways. These examples of the local peace economy in action demonstrate that it is possible to create systems in which wealth and worth are rooted in equitable, community-centered care practices like health care for all, farming and feeding each other, parenting and education that are entrenched in love and engagement, and a culture that uplifts us and inspires interconnection.

The peace economy is built brick by brick, through the commitments of individual people and communities. What follows are some examples (of many more that exist worldwide) showing how people and communities are divesting from the war economy and investing in a future centered in peace, love, and aliveness:

Our globalized, Big Ag, monoculture food systems—which are monopolized by a handful of megacorporations owned by billionaires responsible for the war economy—are unraveling. The COVID-19 pandemic cast a bright light on the fragility of those systems. But the issues the pandemic exposed were present prior to 2020, and they promise to continue into the future. People in communities around the world are relocalizing food supply chains to create food sovereignty and reclaim culture in these times of fraying global food systems:

     Communities in the Pacific Northwest have been working to regionalize food supply chains through relocalized flour mills, sustainable livestock ranches, a         creative chicken farming model, and community garden programs. These efforts have paid off in creating food security for communities while also leading to           greater job opportunities and a thriving ecosystem.

     Palestinian farmers have been rekindling connections with Indigenous farming practices and creating community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs to           resist Israeli colonialism. This has helped Palestinians to reconnect with their land and economically support locally grown food.

     Black, formerly incarcerated people in Chicago are challenging the megacorporations that tend to dominate food contracting with schools and other large         facilities in America by prepping locally sourced meals for schools, nursing homes, and transitional housing. The Chicago worker cooperative ChiFresh Kitchen is       100 percent employee-owned and provides nutritious and culturally appropriate food to these institutions and facilities.

     There are many networks of Indigenous seed savers and others keeping and propagating seeds in community gardens and cooperative programs in the           U.S. and around the world. Indigenous-led communities like Seeding Sovereignty and many others are keeping their spiritual connections and cultural practices       alive through their connections with seeds, and seed savers are challenging the monocrop-based Big Ag industry that is responsible for so much deforestation         and other climate destruction. These networks have also helped bring back “Indigenous foodways that were lost during genocide and forced relocation” inflicted       by European colonizers.

     The Deep Medicine Circle in the San Francisco Bay Area, a women of color-led, worker-directed 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is one group that is rethinking health             care at its roots, and healing the ways U.S. colonial extraction is making people sick. Local community members who make up Deep Medicine Circle are creating       systems of health and care, through the lens of community food justice. They’re planting community gardens and thinking up long-term models of localized             food and community engagement that uplift indigenous practices, provide access to healthy foods in poor urban neighborhoods, and dismantle colonialist ways         of thinking and being in the world.

      Neighbors are voluntarily keeping free-food fridges stocked in cities around the world, in a mutual aid movement that gained speed in response to the          economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. People have fed and cared for each other through the pandemic and beyond, creating a free-fridge movement            that has raised awareness about racial inequity in food systems.

     Sallie Calhoun’s Paicines Ranch in California is working to bring agricultural business and investment up to date with our times and closer to             nature by prioritizing ecosystem health, habitat, and the sequestration of carbon through soil practices. The project was founded with the aim of working with           the dynamic natural world to explore ways of building healthy ecosystems while growing crops and supporting community through food. Paicines Ranch is               intentionally creating a model of doing business that is focused on managing complexities rather than solving problems, and is centered on adding true value           over profits.

Outside of the food system, examples of other applications of mutual aid, social justice, creative arts, community resilience, and activism for human rights and the environment that all embrace the peace economy include:

     People are reimagining safety through alternatives to policing. Safety in the peace economy comes from the engagement of community and the                   reallocation of resources and funding into programs of care—not militarized police forces and punitive systems of justice. While many alternatives to policing           already exist, recent initiatives after the murder of George Floyd by police in May 2020 have introduced changes, both big and small, across the US, and the            global uprisings against systemic racism have led to these issues being part of the mainstream conversation.

     Creative cooperatives are reclaiming real estate and bringing access to art, living spaces, and community spaces back to marginalised Black, Indigenous,         and people of colour (BIPOC) in Oakland and elsewhere who have played an integral part in shaping the culture of cities across the US.

     Fire recovery efforts in Oregon, California, and elsewhere have depended on people-led mutual aid projects and local volunteer networks.                 Devastating fires, worsened by climate change and the criminal negligence of public utilities like Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), have been increasing in recent       years, some of them incinerating entire towns. Fire recovery efforts in Oregon and California have largely been community-led, and networks have formed               among neighbours to create resilience and support—including grief spaces like those created in Ashland, Oregon, which provide a space for people to share their       experiences of loss.

     People are fighting the fossil fuel industry while building community spaces and support for people who are homeless in New Mexico. The                 grassroots project is part of a larger project in New Mexico. SOL for All has brought solar power to various locations across the state in an effort to support               alternative energy solutions, which are necessary to combat climate change.

     The largest dam removal in history started in 2023 in southern Oregon and Northern California, thanks to years of Indigenous-led community           activism. The Karuk, Yurok, and other Native American groups for whom the Klamath River Basin is their ancestral home since time immemorial have been             organizing against the dams since they were proposed in the 1910s—which have had disastrous results for people, salmon, and other wildlife—for decades.             After multigenerational efforts, the massive dam removal project is expected to be completed by 2024.

      Many people are also building a peace economy through creative sharing efforts and alternatives to money-based exchanges. This includes                community gardens, mutual aid groups, and participation in the solidarity economy, and just transition efforts like those of Americans with jobs sharing their           stimulus checks with those in need in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. People are also creating skill share networks like Kola Nut Collaborative and           others, and millions of people daily are sharing tools and operating in a moneyless economy via “free” signs on street corners, Craigslist’s “free stuff” page,             Freecycle, and other creative routes.​​

The above are just some of the countless examples of the peace economy in action—and most of these efforts were started by just one or two people deciding to do something about the problems they saw happening in their local community.

Author: April M. Short is an editor, journalist, and documentary editor and producer. She is a co-founder of the Observatory, where she is the Local Peace Economy editor, and she is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute. Previously, she was a managing editor at AlterNet as well as an award-winning senior staff writer for Good Times, a weekly newspaper in Santa Cruz, California. Her work has been published with the San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, LA Yoga, Pressenza, the Conversation, Salon, and many other publications.

 This article was produced by Local Peace Economy, a project of the Independent Media Institute.