For the last generation, sustainability has been the buzzword around agriculture. Now, a growing chorus is calling for a focus on “agricultural regeneration.” It’s about reclaiming the health of the soil, making our regions more food independent, and keeping our young people on the land, said Graham Christensen, the president of GC Resolve who lives near Oakland. GC Resolve is a communication and consulting company that is working to build resilient communities. Its focus is on environmentally and economically sound principles related to agricultural production. Continue reading

Our food and farming system is facing a reckoning—a global pandemic that upended supply chains and unearthed the horrific consequences of a consolidated meatpacking industry, climate change threatening food production across the country, fertilizer shortages, rising prices at the grocery store, and a sector that accounts for 10 percent of the United State’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Our current agricultural system is failing us. It’s high time we build toward a stronger, healthier, more equitable, and more resilient one. NRDC’s report Regenerative Agriculture: Farm Policy for the 21st Century details an alternative vision of what agriculture can be—one that can respond better to external shocks (like a pandemic), combat climate change by embracing Indigenous growing principles, protect biodiversity by managing farms and ranches as ecosystems, and support competition while putting decision-making power back into the hands of independent farmers and ranchers. Continue reading

Eating wind and snow in dead winter for 1,800 miles, Don Kimbrell barehanded the wheel of an open-cab tractor and crossed a continent in 21 days, driving a John Deere G into history. Launching from the hard-scratch plains of the Texas Panhandle, Kimbrell rode in Tractorcade—an epic 5,000-tractor farmer army that rumbled into Washington, D.C. in 1979, and occupied the National Mall, demanding political attention to address the realities of an agriculture industry in collapse. “I’d drive it all again right now, but my body wouldn’t stand the wear,” says Kimbrell, 78, speaking through the molasses of a sweet Texas drawl. “It ground me down every day to a kind of tired that is hard to describe. I was only 36 when I started that cross-country trip, but when I finished, I was an older man than I am right now.” Continue reading

Fifth generation family farmer Fred Christensen has seen the impacts of climate change on his Nebraska farm. Increasing floods and pests, both connected to climate change, have made it harder to make a living off the land. Continue reading

While U.S. agribusiness and biotechnology groups criticize and threaten Mexico over its bans on glyphosate herbicide and genetically modified corn, Midwest farmers like Graham Christensen say they would be happy to supply our southern neighbor with non-GMO corn. “I think that would be a good idea,” says Christensen, a fifth-generation farmer in Lyons, Nebraska, who grows non-GMO corn and soybeans. “If their farmers aren’t able to produce enough themselves and they need extra, that would be an ideal market to move that grain down south. There are a lot of farmers up here who could easily transition to non-GMO corn, and there are a lot of us that are looking for a solid marketplace.” Continue reading

A 120-strategy plan to reduce Lincoln's climate impact while bracing for future effects of climate change received City Council approval despite concerns from residents over the uncertain costs.  City Council members acknowledged the human impacts of climate change before a 5-1 vote to approve the 2021-2027 Climate Action Plan, which has the overall goal of reducing the city's carbon emissions 80% by 2050 and makes Lincoln the latest American city to enact such a pledge. Continue reading

Hey Misfits, Today we are talking with Graham Christensen founder and president of GC Resolve, a communication and consulting company designed to increase education and mobilization of the general public in order to build regenerative and resilient communities. Currently GC Resolve is raising awareness about Nebraska’s rising water quality issues, and educating and advocating for a change in the food production system to “regenerative” farming and ranching principles. Continue reading

Brittni McGuire UNL student As students, we come to the University of Nebraska to invest in our future. In exchange for tuition, the university invests countless resources to prepare us to positively impact the world after graduation. It’s unsettling that our investment is being counteracted by the university’s investment in fossil fuels -- an industry destroying the lives of people and the planet, making our future uncertain. The last six years have been the hottest ever recorded on Earth. Recent Australian bushfires intensified by climate change killed or displaced over three billion animals. The 2019 flood cost Nebraska more than $1.3 billion in losses and displaced too many families from their homes. This is a global crisis with local solutions. NU must take action, starting with divestment. Continue reading

Carey Gillam exposes a corrupt regulatory regime in “The Monsanto Papers” Just after midnight on August 1, 2017, attorney Brent Wisner gave his legal team the go-ahead to start publishing a series of internal memos and documents from the Monsanto corporation. The internal communications made clear that Monsanto—the company that created saccharine and went on to develop DDT and Agent Orange—was not only aware that independent scientific studies had found that its blockbuster weed killer, Roundup, and the primary ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, were probably carcinogenic and harmful to human health, but the company had also tried to bury the findings. The documents also proved that Monsanto ghost-wrote scientific studies that suggested Roundup was safe (when the company knew it wasn’t), paid experts to support those claims, pressured scientists to reverse their previous conclusions that glyphosate could be linked to cancer, and successfully lobbied regulators at the EPA to keep the agency’s own findings—that glyphosate was probably harmful to humans—under wraps.  Continue reading

The University of Nebraska- Lincoln’s 2020-2021 E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues will hold a virtual youth panel discussion on climate change solutions tomorrow at 7 p.m. Patrice McMahon is the chair of the forum’s board and said she’s excited because it’s the forum’s first student organized, led and driven panel. Continue reading