Via Organica: The Organic Way: A Matter of Life or Death
By Ronnie Cummins, Via Organica A.C.

In the wake of food-based epidemics and steadily deteriorating public health, compounded by warnings from the world’s climate scientists that continued energy-intensive “business as usual” will destroy us, it is obvious that the Via Organica, the “Organic Way” in food and farming is a matter of life or death.

The clock is ticking. Within a decade, diet and environment-related diseases, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, influenza, and cancer—heavily subsidized under Mexico (and the U.S. and Canada’s) current export-oriented, chemical and energy-intensive farm system—will likely bankrupt the entire health care system in North America 

Likewise, global warming and oil shortages will soon severely disrupt industrial agriculture and long-distance food transportation, leading to massive crop failures, food shortages, famine, war, and pestilence. Accelerating levels of greenhouse gases (especially from cars, coal, cattle, and related rainforest and wetlands destruction) threaten to push global warming to a tipping point that will melt the polar icecaps and unleash a cataclysmic discharge of climate-destabilizing methane from the artic tundra.

The good news is that the North American and global organic community have successfully created an alternative model. After 40 years of hard work, the organic community has built up a $30 billion organic food and farming sector in North America and Mexico, representing 3.5% of all grocery store purchases. Sales statistics underline the positive fact that a vast army of organic consumers, 50-100 million North Americans, despite an economic recession, is willing to pay a premium price for organic and sustainable products. Using our current organic system as a model, we have the opportunity to transform agriculture and food distribution (30% of all greenhouse gas pollution), while we carry out a similar “deep green” or permaculture revolution in housing, transportation, utilities, and manufacturing (70% of greenhouse gases).

Decades of research confirm that organic agriculture crop yields are comparable or even 50-70% better (during drought or heavy rain) than chemical/GMO farming. Nutritional studies show that organic crops are qualitatively healthier in terms of vitamin content and trace minerals. Climate experts emphasize that organic farms use, on the average, 50% or less petroleum inputs than chemical farms, while generating drastically less greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide. Moreover diverse, multi-crop organic farms can sequester or store permanently enormous amounts of CO2 in the soil. A return to traditional organic, carbon-sequestering farming practices in Mexico and across the globe could reduce greenhouse gas pollution by 40%. This is enough to begin to reverse global warming.

We can no longer afford to have 90% of our food market monopolized by out-of-control, chemical-intensive, energy-intensive corporations, factory farms, and “profit at any cost” retail chains. The growth of organic food and farming is literally a matter of life or death. Please join Via Orgánica on the long march to save the planet and our children.

Topics for Vía Orgánica’s third workshop include: Fair Trade, winter crops and dry toilets 

Tickets are for sale in our Café Store Vía Orgánica, Margarito Ledesma 2 in Colonia Guadalupe. For reservations e-mail: anamaria@viaorganica.org or call 185-2195.


Ronnie Cummins is the National Director of the Organic Consumers Association in the United States (OCA) author and life time activist. He is co-founder of Via Orgánica.