Agriculture & the Biodiversity Crisis: Reconnecting our Food Systems and Ecosystems
Our Platform
Recognizing that:
- the current rate of species extinction signifies an unprecedented biodiversity crisis.
- climate change is a real and growing threat to our ecosystems.
- industrial-scale agriculture is a primary cause of ecosystem degradation and species losses and jeopardizes sustainable family-scale farms and ranches.
- protected and interconnected wildlands are essential to assuring biological diversity and sustaining healthy rural landscapes.
We believe:
- agriculture must be conducted in ways that are compatible with preservation of the full range of native plants and animals.
- protecting the long term viability of ecosystems results in our to ability sustain production.
- sustainable family farms and ranches nourish healthy human communities and economies, and help safeguard natural communities.
- the current biodiversity and climate crises call for a new conservation ethic that promotes ecological recovery within agricultural lands and across the entire landscape.
We acknowledge:
- healthy ecosystems provide us with many life-giving services, including pollination, insect pest control, carbon and nutrient cycling, clean water, and erosion control.
- the need of farmers to succeed economically while farming ecologically.
- the right of farmers and indigenous peoples to maintain control over sustainable food production.
- the right of consumers to know how and where their food is grown, and the responsibility of consumers to support ecologically sound agriculture.
We support:
- farming practices that accommodate wild habitat and native species, including, large carnivores, birds, and wild fish.
- local and regional food and fiber systems that boost rural economies.
- agricultural practices that strive to eliminate the use of environmentally toxic chemicals and contamination of soil and water resources.
- locally adapted crops and animals that are not genetically engineered.
- existing community-based efforts to create a continental wildlands network in which large protected areas are connected by wildlife movement corridors and are complemented by ecologically managed farms and forests.
- regenerative and resilient agriculture that helps to stabilize and prevent the adverse impacts of our warming world.