Viagra may help men to live longer and reduce their risk of heart disease, study finds
Kelsie Sandoval March 24, 2021
Viaframe/Insider
Male heart attack survivors who took Viagra had a low risk of having another heart attack.
The more frequent the Viagra doses, the more protection it offered against heart issues.
Avoid tobacco and get moving every day to prevent erectile dysfunction and heart issues.
Taking Viagra isn’t just good for your sex life – it may be linked to a longer lifespan in men.
A new study found that men who took the little blue pill after a heart attack lived for years after, without suffering further heart complications.
Viagra is used to treat erectile dysfunction (ED) or high blood pressure in the lungs by relaxing muscles and arteries so blood can flow better. For ED, that better blood flow in the penis helps men to have an erection.
In the study, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden sought to study how Viagra affected men with coronary artery disease, and compared the results to men taking another ED pill, alprostadil.
According to the study, published in the journal of the American College of Cardiology, Viagra worked better than alprostadil at extending lifespan and lowering the risk of another heart attack.
It was particularly effective when administered frequently.
The study had some limitations
The researchers gathered data from 16,548 Swedish men who had experienced both ED and a heart condition in the last six months. Of those, under 2,000 received alprostadil and the rest received Viagra.
The study was observational, meaning researchers did not control the experiment but rather gleaned trends from data.
A limitation to the comparison was that the majority of the men studied took Viagra.
If you have erectile dysfunction and coronary heart disease, talk to your doctor
ED, which affects a third of all men, can be an early sign of cardiovascular disease. The risk factors go hand in hand: physical inactivity, obesity, hypertension, and metabolic syndrome.
For both, the Mayo Clinic recommends avoiding tobacco and getting 30 to 60 minutes of daily physical activity.
John Oliver attends NRDC’s “Night of Comedy” Benefit on April 30, 2019 in New York City. Ilya S. Savenok / Getty Images for NRDC.
In his latest deep dive for Last Week Tonight, comedian John Oliver took on plastic pollution and, specifically, the myth that if we all just recycled enough, the problem would go away.
Instead, Oliver argued, this is a narrative that has been intentionally pushed by the plastics industry for decades. He cited the ionic 1970 Keep America Beautiful ad, which showed a Native American man (really an Italian American actor) crying as a hand tossed litter from a car window. Keep America Beautiful, Oliver pointed out, was partly funded by plastics-industry trade group SPI.
“Which might seem odd until you realize that the underlying message there is, ‘It’s up to you, the consumer, to stop pollution,'” Oliver said. “And that has been a major through line in the recycling movement, a movement often bankrolled by companies that wanted to drill home the message that it is your responsibility to deal with the environmental impact of their products.”
Oliver pointed out several problems with contemporary recycling programs. He cited the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) statistic that only 8.7 percent of the plastics produced in the U.S. are actually recycled, and investigated why this is.
For one thing, most municipalities do not actually have the capacity to recycle most of the numbers inside the “chasing arrows” symbols on the back of plastic packaging. Numbers 1 and 2, representing PETE and HDPE, are more commonly recycled, but that leaves numbers 3 through 7, which include things like plastic bags and cups. We have the capacity to recycle less than five percent of these, Oliver said.
“Out of the seven numbers, only two are really much good, and that is a pretty bad ratio for a group of seven,” Oliver said.
In fact, it is cheaper for companies to produce virgin plastics than to recycle existing ones. Despite this, they have lobbied for the “chasing arrows” symbols to appear on their products, as well as for the existence of curbside recycling programs.
If anything needs to change in consumer behavior, it is in our willingness to believe this myth.
“Lies go down easier when you want them to be true,” Oliver said.
He even showed a clip of a recycling plant director who coined a new term for the consumer habit of putting non-recyclable items in the recycling bin: wish-cycling.
“Here’s an umbrella,” Martin Borque, the director, said, lifting the item out of the materials he had to sort. “I wish it was recyclable. It’s not.”
Removing these items causes extra work for recycling plants, and can even end up contaminating plastics that could otherwise be recycled and reused.
Oliver said that consumers shouldn’t stop recycling, though they should be sure to only blue-bin items their local plant can actually process. However, the major change needs to come from industry and policy, he said.
He spoke out in favor of Extended Producer Responsibility, or EPR, which puts the burden of dealing with waste back on the company that makes it. The U.S. is one of the only wealthy countries without an EPR law on the books, though legislators have been trying to change that with the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act, which was introduced last year and is set to be introduced again in 2021.
“The real behavior change has to come from plastics manufacturers themselves,” Oliver concluded. “Without that, nothing significant is going to happen.”
Oliver’s segment won approval from activists working to pass EPR legislation in the U.S. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group thanked the TV host on Twitter for calling attention to the issue.
“Makers of single-use plastics shouldn’t escape the costs to our planet and public health,” the group wrote.
Experts Urge World Leaders to ‘Put Marine Ecosystems at the Heart of Climate Policy’
By Guest March 22, 2021
By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
As global weather experts warned Monday that the world’s oceans are “under threat like never before,” more than 3,000 scientists, politicians, and other public figures had endorsed an open letter urging national governments to “recognize the critical importance of our ocean and blue carbon in the fight against the climate emergency.”
Led by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) and backed by 66 partner groups, the letter (pdf) calling on world leaders to “put marine ecosystems at the heart of climate policy” is now open to public signature and will be presented to governments before November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow.
“Nature-based solutions like restoration and protection of marine habitats will both help us meet global de-carbonization goals and prevent the worst impacts of global heating while also protecting the lives and livelihoods of the three billion people who depend on marine biodiversity around the world,” said Steve Trent, executive director of the London-based EJF. “Our political leaders must recognize the urgency of the climate crisis and take truly bold, transformative action to reach a global zero carbon economy.”
“Our ocean gives us every second breath. It absorbs around a third of the CO2 we pump out, and has taken in over a nuclear bomb’s worth of heat every second for the past 150 years,” the letter says. “It underpins our climate system and keeps our planet habitable: It is the blue beating heart of our planet.”
“Yet, when it comes to inclusion in climate policies, marine habitats are often neglected. A healthy ocean, teeming with life, is a vital tool in the bid to tackle global heating: more than half of biological carbon capture is stored by marine wildlife,” the groups note, highlighting the power of mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and the wildlife of the open sea.
“The COP26 climate talks and COP15 biodiversity talks this year will be the most important meetings for generations. They will set us on the road to either a sustainable future for humanity or conflict, suffering, and mass extinctions,” the letter continues, urging world leaders to take three specific actions:
Include specific, legally binding targets to protect and restore blue carbon environments in their updated Nationally Determined Contribution implementation plans;
Commit to the 30×30 ocean protection plan and designate 30% of the ocean as ecologically representative marine protected areas by 2030; and
Agree an international moratorium on deep sea mining to protect the deep sea from irreversible, large-scale harm.
The letter comes about a month after a U.N. report warned that Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) pledges—or plans to reduce planet-heating emissions—that parties to the Paris climate agreement have unveiled so far ahead of COP26 are dramatically inadequate on the whole. As Common Dreamsreported, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the findings “a red alert for our planet.”
Letter signatory Richard Unsworth, a marine scientist and co-founder of Project Seagrass, said Monday that “there is real hope: protection and restoration of habitats like seagrass meadows can be a key part of the solution in tackling climate change. But the missing piece has been the fundamental long-term support from the government.”
“If we’re going to fight climate change and face up to the associated problems of food security,” he said, “then we need to restore our oceans, and that involves real government support as part of a genuine green deal for the environment.”
Other signatories include including Pavel Kabat, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports lead author and inaugural research director of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO); human rights barrister Baroness Helena Kennedy; University of Exeter marine conservation professor Brendan Godley; wildlife filmmaker Gordon Buchanan; actor Joanna Lumley; and politicians from the United Kingdom, Germany, Indonesia, Taiwan, and beyond.
British Green MP Caroline Lucas emphasized that policies and action reflecting the importance of marine ecosystems “to both people and planet” must be “additional to—and not instead of—decarbonization on land.”
Echoing recent messages from fellow youth climate campaigners across the globe, 13-year-old Finlay Pringle, another signatory, said that “talking and doing nothing is not acceptable anymore. We don’t want more empty promises from our politicians, we need them to face the climate emergency and take action now, rather than continuing to pass the responsibility on to future generations.”
The letter was released as the WMO prepared for World Meteorological Day, which on Tuesday will celebrate “the ocean, our climate, and weather” while raising awareness about scientific findings regarding growing threats, including a landmark IPCCreport on the world’s seas and frozen regions.
“Ocean heat is at record levels because of greenhouse gas emissions, and ocean acidification continues unabated. The impact of this will be felt for hundreds of years because the ocean has a long memory,” saidWMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement Monday. “Ice is melting, with profound repercussions for the rest of the globe, through changing weather patterns and accelerating sea level rise.”
“In 2020, the annual Arctic sea ice minimum was among the lowest on record, exposing Polar communities to abnormal coastal flooding, and stakeholders such as shipping and fisheries, to sea ice hazards,” he added, also noting that “warm ocean temperatures helped fuel a record Atlantic hurricane season, and intense tropical cyclones in the Indian and South Pacific Oceans.”
This article originally appeared on Common Dreams. It has been republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
John Oliver Shares Horrific Truths About Recycling Plastics
M. Arbeiter March 22, 2021
John Oliver. Purveyor of laughs, purveyor of doom. By now, you likely know the drill when you tune into Last Week Tonight. You’ll get some pretty horrifying information about a facet of our society you maybe haven’t paid too much attention to. But you’ll also get a few dozen jokes about funny-looking animals! So you take your medicine with a spoonful of sugar. This week’s episode, concerning the recyclability (or lack thereof) of plastics, provides all of the above.
We learn about the deeply convoluted nature of the recycling institution. John touches on how so few plastics are actually recycled. As you’ll learn in the above video, such a small percentage of plastic products are recycle-friendly. And that’s before the concern of recyclable plastics becoming contaminated or just tossed out. And that’s not even factoring how many of those recyclable plastics end up recycling into non-recyclable plastics. I told you it was convoluted!
Another interesting piece of John’s latest lesson involves the marketing of recycling. The video highlights how major corporations have long put the onus on the consumer alone to “save the environment.” Meanwhile, with so many non-recyclable plastics in production, it’s practically out of the everyday person’s hands to manage this issue whatsoever.
A man roots through a landfill. HBO
Of course, John closes out the segment with encouragement to keep recycling, albeit more mindfully. Following this, an appropriate castigation of the major corporations producing plastics; they’re the ones that need to change behavior in order to get the planet into better shape.
Some harrowing statistics in this video really drive this point home. Half the plastics ever produced have come into being since 2005; additionally, so much plastic litters the ocean, that by 2050, the mass of plastic should outnumber the mass of fish.
Yeah, harrowing! But John Oliver tosses in a talking blobfish and a demonic goat-man to make it all a bit more palatable.
John Oliver stares at a man wearing a goat head mask.
Footage Of Australia’s Massive Mouse Plague Will Haunt Your Nightmares
Ed Mazza, Overnight Editor
Parts of Australia are battling a “plague” of rodents.
Large rural portions of inland New South Wales and Queensland are being overrun by millions of mice, which have taken over farmland, homes, stores, hospitals and cars. They’re also eating everything in sight.
“You can imagine that every time you open a cupboard, every time you go to your pantry, there are mice present,” rodent expert Steve Henry told the wire service. “And they’re eating into your food containers, they’re fouling your clean linen in your linen cupboard, they’re running across your bed at night.”
They’re also leaving behind haunting videos and images:
At one farm, the mice ate through hundreds of thousands of dollars of hay bales, reducing them to mounds of dust in a matter of weeks.
“It’s a real kick in the guts,” farmer Rowena Macrae of Coonamble told Queensland Country Life. “It’s so very hard to watch.”
“They stink whether they are alive or dead, you can’t escape the smell sometimes,” Pip Goldsmith of Coonamble, who has trapped thousands of mice, told The Guardian Australia. “It’s oppressive, but we are resilient.”
Lisa Gore of Toowoomba told the newspaper that her 12-year-old son caught 183 in a single night.
“It’s like his job at the moment,” she said. “He is very proud of himself.”
Local reports said the mouse population continues to grow and efforts to poison the rodents had started to backfire as dead critters were turning up in water tanks. One homeowner in Elong Elong investigating a water blockage encountered a “revolting” smell, according to Australia’s ABC News.
“We always filter the water going into our house from the tanks so for us, personally, we feel we’ve covered our precautions so we didn’t notice anything with the taste,” Louise Hennessy told the news agency. “But the smell of the mice at the top of the tank was so disgusting.”
Public health authorities are now warning of the potential for bacteria in the water if dead mice remain in the tanks.
Authorities said a drop in temperature or a heavy rainfall could wipe out most of the mice at any time.
Women Are More Likely To Have COVID Vaccine Side Effects Than Men. Fun!
Asia Ewart March 22, 2021
A new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has concluded that women are more likely to experience side effects after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. According to the “First Month of COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Monitoring” study published last month, 79% of reports of the more serious symptoms caused by the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines came from women.
The month long study followed the first 13,794,904 Americans who received the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, noting how they reacted to the shots from December 14, 2020, to January 13, 2021. People reported symptoms using the vaccine adverse event reporting system, or VAERS, for the study; the VAERS system also monitored the vaccine’s effect on the body. During this time, the most frequent side effects reported were headache, fatigue, and dizziness, along with 62 cases of anaphylaxis. One hundred and thirteen total deaths were also reported by the study’s end, including 78 among long-term care facility residents taking part. By the end of the study, it was found the vaccine’s side effects were overwhelmingly reported by women. Only 62.1% of the actual study participants were women.
Experts have pointed to differences in immune systems between men and women as a reason why one sex reported more symptoms. “We see more autoimmune diseases in women than we do in men and we know the effects of pregnancy on the immune system can be significant,” David Wohl, MD, an infectious diseases physician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, told ABC7 on Saturday. He also explained that women are more likely to report their symptoms to a medical professional compared to men.
Microbiologist and immunologist Sabra Klein, PhD, who works at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, echoed the “sex difference” in how people are affected by vaccines in The New York Timesearlier this month, stating that it was “completely consistent with past reports of other vaccines.” She also noted that “there is value to preparing women that they may experience more adverse reactions. That is normal, and likely reflective of their immune system working.”
Since the study’s end, Johnson & Johnson’s COVID – 19 vaccine has been given approval for usage in the U.S., and AstraZeneca is applying for approval in April. Vaccine eligibility currently varies by state, but many frontline workers, public-facing government and other employees, and people over the age of 60 are among those being given priority. President Joe Biden announced earlier this month that all adults in the U.S. would be eligible to be vaccinated by May 1 in an effort to get the country largely back to “normal” by July 4.
Strong reaction to first COVID-19 vaccine may signal previous infection, experts say
Here’s what a strong reaction to the first COVID-19 vaccine shot means. (Photo: Getty Images)
With over 40 million Americans now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, it’s no secret that the shots can lead to unpleasant side effects such as fever, headache, body aches and fatigue. But while initial research suggested that individuals were more likely to experience these symptoms after the second dose, experts now say that those who previously had COVID-19 — whether knowingly or not — may end up reacting more strongly to the first dose.
One study released in early February from Bar-Ilan University in Israel found that the immune response created after the first dose of vaccine in those who previously had COVID-19 was “so effective” that it “opens the debate as to whether one dose of the vaccine may suffice.” Another study published in the Lancet found a 140-fold increase in antibodies after the first vaccine among those who had previously had a COVID-19 infection versus those who hadn’t.
Dr. Erin Morcomb, a family medicine physician at the Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse, Wis., and head of its COVID-19 vaccination team, confirms that the reactions can vary based on your health history. “What we’ve seen in studies is that the second dose does tend to have a little bit more potential to cause side effects than the first dose, but for people who have had COVID-19 infection previously and then recovered, they are at higher risk of having those same side effects after their first dose,” she says.
The reason, she explains, is that those who developed the infection previously have an immune system that is already primed to fight it off. “After they’ve had their COVID-19 active infection, they’ve made some antibodies themselves in their body to the national infection,” Morcomb says. “Then when they get their first dose, their body is already recognizing that they have some antibodies and they can make a really robust immune response to that first dose of vaccine.”
She notes that those who had treatment with monoclonal antibodies need to wait 90 days before getting the vaccine as they can “block the immune system for making a good response to the vaccine.”
For those who haven’t had COVID-19, the first shot of either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine ends up serving as the body’s introduction to the virus. That’s why the second dose, in those who haven’t had COVID-19, can often cause a big reaction. “This time, the body recognizes it like, ‘Hey, I’ve seen this before,'” says Morcomb. “And then it really tries to ramp up the immune response.”
To be sure, that’s not to say that those who don’t have side effects should be concerned. Morcomb says there is no research suggesting that the absence of side effects is an indicator that the vaccine isn’t working. “For some reason [some individuals], their bodies just don’t show the side effects as much,” she says. “So it’s not like an absolute rule that just because you had COVID, you’re going to have side effects, because it doesn’t happen in everybody. And those people should still be reassured that they’re making a good immune response to the vaccine.”
As for how soon after a COVID-19 infection individuals can get vaccinated, she says there’s good news there as well. “Initially we had recommended waiting 90 days from a COVID infection to get the vaccine but that actually isn’t necessary — there’s not a decreased effectiveness of the vaccine if you get it before that,” she says. “So here we are recommending that once people come off of their quarantine — so 14 days — that they get their shot then.”
Electric Semi Trucks Are Actually Cheaper Per Mile Than Diesel Trucks, Report Finds
Climate Nexus March 17, 2021
Diesel trucks are seen driving along a U.S. highway. Lumigraphics / Getty Images
Heavy duty electric trucks (a.k.a. semis) cost so much less to operate per mile than diesel-powered trucks at today’s prices that they would pay for themselves in just three years, according to a new report by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UCLA, and UC-Berkeley.
Electrifying heavy-duty trucks would substantially improve air quality.
Semis account for just 11% of vehicles on the road, but more than half of carbon pollution and 71% of deadly particulate pollution.
At today’s costs, electric semis could cost 13% less per mile than a comparable diesel-powered truck, and could cost just half as much per mile by 2030 with the right mix of policy.
Regenerative agriculture is the next great ally in fight against climate change
Nancy Pfund March 11, 2021
It seems that every week a new agribusiness, consumer packaged goods company, bank, technology corporation, celebrity or Facebook friend announces support for regenerative agriculture.
For those of us who have been working on climate and/or agriculture solutions for the last couple of decades, this is both exciting and worrisome.
With the rush to be a part of something so important, the details and hard work, the incremental advancements and wins, as well as the big, hairy problems that remain can be overlooked or forgotten. When so many are swinging for the fences, it’s easy to forget that singles and doubles usually win the game.
As a managing partner and founder of DBL Partners, I have specifically sought out companies to invest in that not only have winning business models but also solve the planet’s biggest problems. I believe that agriculture can be a leading climate solution while feeding a growing population.
At the same time, I want to temper the hype, refocus the conversation and use the example of agriculture to forge a productive template for all business sectors with carbon habits to fight climate change.
First, let’s define regenerative agriculture: It encompasses practices such as cover cropping and conservation tillage that, among other things, build soil health, enhance water retention, and sequester and abate carbon.
The broad excitement around regenerative agriculture is tied to its potential to mitigate climate impact at scale. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine estimates that soil sequestration has the potential to eliminate over 250 million metric tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to 5% of U.S. emissions.
It is important to remember that regenerative practices are not new. Conservationists have advocated for cover cropping and reduced tillage for decades, and farmers have led the charge.
The reason these practices are newly revered today is that, when executed at scale, with the heft of new technology and innovation, they have demonstrated agriculture’s potential to lead the fight against climate change.
So how do we empower farmers in this carbon fight?
Today, offset markets get the majority of the attention. Multiple private, voluntary markets for soil carbon have appeared in the last couple of years, mostly supported by corporations driven by carbon neutrality commitments to offset their carbon emissions with credit purchases.
Offset markets are a key step toward making agriculture a catalyst for a large-scale climate solution; organizations that support private carbon markets build capacity and the economic incentive to reduce emissions.
“Farming carbon” will drive demand for regenerative finance mechanisms, data analytics tools and new technology like nitrogen-fixing biologicals — all imperatives to maximize the adoption and impact of regenerative practices and spur innovation and entrepreneurship.
It’s these advancements, and not the carbon credit offsets themselves, that will permanently reduce agriculture emissions.
Offsets are a start, but they are only part of the solution. Whether generated by forestry, renewable energy, transportation or agriculture, offsets must be purchased by organizations year after year, and do not necessarily reduce a buyer’s footprint.
Inevitably, each business sector needs to decarbonize its footprint directly or create “insets” by lowering the emissions within its supply chain. The challenge is, this is not yet economically viable or logistically feasible for every organization.
For organizations that purchase and process agricultural products — from food companies to renewable fuel producers — soil carbon offsets can indirectly reduce emissions immediately while also funding strategies that directly reduce emissions permanently, starting at the farm.
DBL invests in ag companies that work on both sides of this coin: facilitating soil carbon offset generation and establishing a credit market while also building fundamentally more efficient and less carbon-intensive agribusiness supply chains.
This approach is a smart investment for agriculture players looking to reduce their climate impact. The business model also creates demand for environmental services from farmers with real staying power.
Way back in 2006, when DBL first invested in Tesla, we had no idea we would be helping to create a worldwide movement to unhinge transportation from fossil fuels.
Now, it’s agriculture’s turn. Backed by innovations in science, big data, financing and farmer networking, investing in regenerative agriculture promises to slash farming’s carbon footprint while rewarding farmers for their stewardship.
Future generations will reap the benefits of this transition, all the while asking, “What took so long?”
Goodbye, Organic; Hello, ‘Regen-Certified’—Ready for the Newest Label on Store Shelves?
Karn Manhas March 9, 2021
Now that they’re spending more time at home, my young nieces have gotten into cooking and gardening. Just the other day, they called to grill me on pesticides in fruits and vegetables, and “the Dirty Dozen”—a list designed to generate awareness around pesticides in food. “Uncle Karn,” they asked, “how important is it to buy organic strawberries? What about bananas?”
This got me thinking. For many of us, the organic certification label has become a touchstone we look for to help us choose what’s good for us. Indeed, “organic” has influenced an entire generation of shoppers’ food choices.
But is it enough?
As important as the organic designation has been, it leaves a critical part of the agricultural puzzle unaddressed. We may know that our kale has been grown without certain synthetic chemicals. But how do we know if it’s been cultivated in a way that restores the planet, strengthens food security or fights climate change?
For many people, these questions are more important than ever. But to know the answers, we’d need a new label entirely, one that speaks to a farming philosophy that’s gaining widespread traction, exactly when it’s needed most: regenerative agriculture.
Regenerative Agriculture 101
So, what is it? Regenerative agriculture is an approach to farming that gives back to the land. Practices like cover crops, reduced tillage and diverse crop rotations are regenerative because they can take carbon out of the air and reinvest it back into the soil. The result is heartier soil, dense in nutrients. As the soil grows richer, crops grow healthier, boosting yields for farmers.
This stands in contrast to conventional farming methods, from mono-cropping to tilling, that strip the soil of the nutrients required to grow healthy plants. Farmers then must rely on inputs like pesticides and fertilizers to ensure crops survive. This system, which we’ve embraced for much of the last century, has now reached a point of diminishing returns, requiring ever more inputs simply to sustain yields.
But there’s another critical virtue to regenerative agriculture: Pulling carbon out of the air and into the soil is a powerful means of addressing climate change. Indeed, some studies suggest that farmland and rangelands could sequester over 600 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere. The potential of regenerative agriculture is getting attention from leaders, like U.S. President Joe Biden and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, as one solution for curbing the climate crisis.
Ultimately, regenerative agriculture aspires to be more than sustainable: The goal is to leave the earth better than we found it, setting in motion a virtuous cycle of healthier soil, healthier plants, healthier people and healthier ecosystems.
Jumpstarting the Regenerative Revolution
While the benefits of moving to regenerative agriculture practices are clear, awareness is just blossoming. And this is precisely where advocates can borrow from the organic playbook. After all, even 25 years ago, “organic” remained a niche distinction, understood and championed by a relative few. But by showing not just consumers but farmers, corporations and governments alike the upsides of embracing organic foods, these advocates jumpstarted a revolution.
Regenerative agriculture now needs to show these same stakeholders that the approach can be a win-win.
Consumers are already eager for change. The pandemic has driven demand for more sustainable, environmentally friendly and ethical products. One survey found that 83 percent of respondents take the environment into consideration when making purchases. By building awareness around regenerative agriculture as a tool to fight climate change, we can incentivize shoppers to look for regenerative foods the way they look for organic labels.
For farmers, meanwhile, regenerative agriculture promises real returns, minus some of the hurdles posed by organic farming. In the U.S., transitioning to organic requires a hefty upfront investment that many farmers can’t afford. Converting a farm to organic takes a minimum of three years. During that time, farmers often contend with steep losses that are only partly offset by higher market prices. But making the switch to regenerative pays dividends that only grow year-over-year as soil becomes healthier and more productive. A no-till farmer in Ohio, for example, earns a net of $500 more per acre than her peers who use conventional farming techniques.
For organic, the real turning point came with corporate buy in. Costco and Whole Foods were early leaders, but now nearly every grocery chain has organic options. The good news is that major companies are beginning to invest in regenerative farms. In 2019, General Mills, motivated by the business threat of climate change, committed to advance regenerative agricultural practices on one million acres of farmland by 2030. Meanwhile, Cargill has committed funds to promote regenerative systems, and food supplier Tate & Lyle has invested in a sustainable agriculture program.
Better soil, it turns out, is better business.
Earning the Regenerative Label
As more farmers adopt regenerative farming techniques, however, there’s confusion around how their products should be labeled. Some products grown through regenerative practices are labeled sustainable, some organic. A better option would be a clear labeling system that embraces the regenerative distinction. This would help customers identify what to buy, give farmers a guide and accelerate the regenerative movement as a whole.
Options are already emerging. Companies like Patagonia and Dr. Bronner’s have partnered with the organic pioneers at the Rodale Institute to develop the Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC) seal: an indication that a product promotes soil health and land management, animal welfare, and farmer and worker fairness. A bunch of grapes at the grocery store might earn the ROC standard if it’s grown using conservation tillage and was picked by farmworkers who were paid a living wage, for example.
While it’s a good start, this system uses the USDA organic certification system as a baseline—which, for all its virtues, is heavily proscriptive. By imposing a set of rules and requirements that dictate how farmers can farm, this system has proved a barrier to adoption in the past.
Instead, we should focus on a system that allows farmers to do what they do best and rewards them for outputs and outcomes, not for process. If their use of regenerative practices increases soil carbon, for example, they should qualify for the regenerative label. That way, farmers could employ the regenerative techniques most accessible and applicable in their context, be that conservation tillage, cover cropping or crop rotation, rather than having to satisfy a laundry list of costly rules.
This will hasten adoption and—as farmers see the benefits for themselves—lead to the wholesale embrace of healthier agricultural practices. Because regenerative agriculture encourages a virtuous cycle, over time, farmers would have less need for inputs like pesticides, fertilizers and antibiotics.
Indeed, this is the real power of regenerative agriculture: It creates its own forward momentum. Not only is it better for the planet, but—as soil health progressively improves—it yields better quality harvests at a better price. Much like electric car adoption is accelerating not only because vehicles are better for the planet but increasingly because they outperform and outprice competitors, so too regenerative agriculture represents a better model, whether the barometer is global health or farmers’ bottom lines. Just as most cars may one day be electric, so might all agriculture one day be regenerative.
In fact, by the time my nieces are grown, I hope their grocery trips won’t involve carefully scanning for a label. I look forward to the day where it’s a given that food is grown using the most economical, productive and healthy approach that leaves the planet better than we found it. Why would we have it any other way?
Karn Manhas is the CEO and founder of Terramera, a global agtech leader fusing science, nature and artificial intelligence to transform how food is grown and the economics of agriculture.
