The Regenerative Agriculture Solution

“Read this book to understand why you should care about regenerative agriculture. Until the public is better-informed and insists on sweeping changes to current agricultural policy . . . we will continue to degrade our planet and destabilize our climate. Leu and Cummins, through inspiring stories and solid science, show just how quickly we could turn that around.”—Allan Savory, president, Savory Institute; chairman, Africa Centre for Holistic Management 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 isThe 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.