Ethos: a journey with many beginnings
Regeneration by another name
My journey with regenerative agriculture has had many beginnings, but today I’ll begin with the farmer in Yasothorn, Thailand who showed me “the supermarket behind his home”. Our time together was relaxing and simple: we caught fish from one of his ponds, collected herbs and vegetables, and prepared what was the freshest meal of my life up to that point. It was a feast of flavors from the abundance of his farm (which was actually quite small) whose impact on me endured long after I took my leave of his hospitality.
I met this farmer as a consequence of interviewing him and 8 other members of organic cooperatives in Yasothorn province as part of my first paid job with Green Net. My role was to learn about the long term and ongoing impacts of transitioning to organic farming and fair trade. I knew to expect that the results would be positive, but found myself struck by the depth and diversity of benefits, particularly within such a relatively short time. All of the farmers described that there was a resurgence of life with increased abundance and that they experienced improved health, reduced their debts, and felt more connected and happy. They shared how they saw this in the improved health of the soil, in the return of natural biodiversity, in the reduced costs, and in the increased productivity and yields. Not only were they restoring abundance, they were making discoveries through experimentation in very different ways. One farmer and his son saved and selected many different local varieties of seed including 3 colors of sesame seed. Others developed integrated fish-rice farming systems, or were using trimmed logs to grow delicious mushrooms. Better yet, the impact of these innovations compounded as they shared ideas with one other.
This served as a stark contrast to what I observed earlier in my life. As someone who had the privilege to travel extensively to Thailand, Bhutan, Nepal, India, and more from the age of 14, I noticed that these places and communities were almost always in worse states each time I visited — and degenerating progressively. This was most readily visible in terms of ecological health, but also could be observed in a degradation of community well-being and the culture, which saddened and disturbed me. Over time my observation was that supposed “development” was at the heart of this destruction. Development can provide modern infrastructure, consumable material goods, and more US dollars, but in these cases it might be better called “exploitation” because of the extent to which it damaged the environment and displaced community and culture with something of far less value, like a shiny plastic trinket that is quickly broken and lost. And yet these farmers in Yasothorn demonstrated that this destruction is not inherent with human progress.
As I learned with and from them, the potential of what we call regenerative agriculture today started to become more fully visible to me — even though it was using one of its other names.
Like I said, it was one beginning — and from there, I started to look for more instances where development and human progress supported each other.
From Organic to Participatory Guarantee Systems
Green Net followed a social (or, more accurately, eco-social) enterprise model when I first started volunteering there in 2002. They used business and trade to support small-scale farmers to adopt organic methods and restore ecological and community health. This made them quite unusual at the time, because most NGOs I met were against integrating any form of business or trade. I felt that this was a missed opportunity given that, as the most powerful forces on the planet, they could be tools for positive change if used properly. At the very least, to ignore and avoid business and trade was to avoid the core of the problem and its potential to create and support solutions. At that time in Thailand and SE Asia, there was very limited market linkage and recognition. Produce and products were being funneled into the same problematic market system despite the success of farmers’ ecological practices.
The core values of Green Net’s work (including the Organic Fair Trade Rice Chain Development Programme, which I coordinated) included a desire to build capacity in the supply system, quality management, and development of consumer trust and recognition. This program started long before regeneration was well-known as a term or a movement like it is today, but for me regeneration has never been about the name — it is about effects we can see and observe, like the principles and outputs of this programme.
In 2003, when our program launched, almost all of the available certification methods came from foreign certification bodies, which rely on the costly practice of bringing in people from far away and paying international certification fees. The systems were also very complex and evolved from the very different conditions and cultures of countries like Germany, the USA, and the UK — which discouraged most farmer groups from attempting to certify. Who can blame them? In this model, the standards and methods for defining and “achieving” organic status from the “developed” world (in cooler latitudes) are arbitrarily imposed onto farmers in the “developing” world (in the tropics.) For example, wood vinegar (which I had seen used in Thailand for many years with success on ecological and functional levels) was removed from the EU list of acceptable inputs because, as I understand it, wood vinegar is not a common part of European practices.
Of course there are core principles around regeneration of soil and ecological health that are compatible — but the species, tools, and techniques are inseparable from a habitat — not to mention the cultural practices and values. A strong body of agricultural knowledge and principles in southeast Asia has been developed over generations and through ongoing experimentation and innovation.
Vitoon Panyakul, who co-founded Green Net, had extensive experience and understood the much simpler origins of certification and how they could succeed in building trust. We called the model of this possibility an internal guarantee system*. Such a system presents farmers with simple clear standards that fit both organic principles and local culture and context. It also suggests a process that farmers manage themselves, in which they primarily inspect and support their farmers. In many cases, they reached markets and gained recognition. Within a few years, similar ideas and methods were emerging around the world and becoming recognized under IFOAM as Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS).
PGS develops from the vision, experience and context of farmers — who I believe are the best people to see and evaluate what is working and what is not because they are the people of the community and the stewards of the land. In fact, PGS’s peer review / visit process is designed to assign farmers to complete most of the work inspecting and advising farms in contexts similar to their own — as opposed to annual visits from external certification officers to only a sample of farmers from a group.† This reduces cost and ensures high quality visits; farmer peers can often provide functional and appropriate advice based in relevant experience. Given that farmers see and observe each other frequently, this shared responsibility can be a much more effective system for interrupting violations and strengthening bonds.
Integrating Fair Trade principles
One of the troubles with certifications is that they can be incentivized to shift away from their core values by trade and growth demands, as I observed at a fair trade meeting in Chiapas, Mexico, which I attended on behalf of Green Net (a Fair Trade organization.) I witnessed frustration with FLO (Fairtrade International) as they were shifting certification to include certifying large plantations starting with crops like tea that are primarily grown in plantations. The frustration arose because certifying plantations represents a reinforcement of the historical appropriation of land from village / farmer communities and indentured labor use with the establishment of plantations in the first place; a truly “fair” approach, in my opinion, should play a role in regenerating sovereignty and strengthening equity.
At a later meeting with FLO-certified producer groups, many attendees expressed frustration at how much they had spent on a certification whose label they were not allowed to use on their own products sold in their own countries. Due to this limitation, Green Net’s best option was to develop its own fair trade label to put on its products in Thailand. In my view, being put in this position forced Green Net to make a choice that was counter to the ideas of fair trade. A common mark should welcome all fair trade producer groups and structurally center smallholder interests.
Working with Vitoon Panyakul and others to develop a new WFTO certification system was much more inspiring. We noticed that most certification systems (including organic,) operate in a pass/fail paradigm, whose high demands wind up excluding farmers who often start from difficult circumstances and with limited resources. Progressive standards, on the other hand, presented a more empowering alternative that aligns with fair trade’s goal of building the capacity and competency of local producer organizations. They allow organizations to set objectives that compound over time, and provide farmers with a path towards evolution and improvement. Aside from minimum standards to disallow abusive practices, most of the standards focus on allowing, supporting, and assessing continuous improvement in areas including ecology and environment, health and safety, gender equality and participation, and economic well-being and livelihoods. New areas of focus may be identified during a regular internal review/evaluation process. This model empowers organizations to learn, evolve, and move from their own place and culture.
Another key value of fair trade is the spirit of long term mutually supportive partnerships between producer organizations and fair trade brands/distributors. For example, Green Net’s development and evolution was greatly supported by its fair trade partners, including Claro, Altermecato, EZA, and Oxfam Belgium — and it has successfully maintained its commitments and relationships even when demand has been high from other buyers for a limited supply. Beyond being an ecological process, it requires shifts and improvements in other areas and systems like the focal areas of fair trade.
An underlying ethos
My journey has brought me back to where I started: knowing that the core of what is important and interesting is not in any name or certification, but in what can truly be observed happening. Where there is a restoration of ecological health and abundance with human well-being, culture and community, there is regeneration. The larger economic system — especially brands and consumers — has to recognize that farmers live in a world that is primarily driven by money and trade, and that their influence is crucial for supporting regeneration. In order to accomplish that, we need a system to build trust as it links regenerative farmers to markets that value regeneration. One that ideally focuses on what happens and can be appreciated beyond its specific methods and practices. As a progressive and continuous process, regeneration will nurture and enable such a system.
There are seeds and knowledge of regeneration in every farmer group I have visited. Communities have strong practices already. These communities are the ones most affected by and aware of both degeneration and regeneration.
For these reasons, and more, it is clear to me that the vision, standards, process, and evaluation should be sourced from and center within a given place and community. Regeneration is multidimensional; in addition to soil and ecology, it should include aspects like health, community, culture, livelihood, and even spiritual well being, which are valued and experienced by the farmer communities that are leading the regenerative process. In order to benefit from being linked to much larger systems, as in fair trade, it requires the long term support of brand/client partners and other stakeholders working together.
The latest attempt to honor these principles has a new name: Ethos ROV™. I have been a part of a team at Terra Genesis that, in an effort to honor the principles of co-creation and regeneration, has developed Ethos ROV™ in partnership with the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA) comprising cotton farmers in Haiti, the Wanakaset rubber farmers in southern Thailand, and UOPROCAE farmers comprising cacao growers, as well as the companies and corporations that, as buyers, have enabled such an innovative model for supply systems. Ethos™ is a data-driven platform that is designed to allow for collaborative monitoring and reporting on the holistic impacts of regenerative agriculture: from soil health to farmer and community wellbeing. Terra Genesis and our partners envision it as a way for growers to identify and record indicators of regeneration in their unique place and to receive additional revenue streams by owning their data.
While I don’t know where the regenerative process will go or evolve as it continues to be a process which invites new potential and innovation, I have done my best to bring what I have learned from this journey with certification and guarantee systems to Terra Genesis and our co-development and evolution of the Ethos ROV™, which embodies many of these lessons and opens up new areas of potential.
* This also drew from extensive experience with grower group certification and internal control systems, which opened organic certification up to small-holder groups.
† External forms of verification can complement internal farmer group processes of both extension and inspection, thus working together.
This piece was edited by MJ Halberstadt
