Ronnie Cummins, founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association, will be giving a free public lecture entitled “Climate Catastrophe: How Organic Agriculture and Green Technology Can Help Us Survive the 21st Century” on Wednesday, March 10, 7:30pm at the Fairfield Public Library.

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is a non-profit, U.S. based network of 850,000 consumers, dedicated to safeguarding organic standards and promoting a healthy, just, and sustainable system of agriculture and commerce. The OCA’s primary strategy is to work on national and global campaigns promoting health, justice, and sustainability that integrate public education, marketplace pressure, media work, litigation, and grassroots lobbying.

In his article The Organic Revolution: How We Can Stop Global Warming Cummins writes, “Beyond the gloom and doom of the climate crisis, there lies a powerful and regenerative grassroots solution: organic food, farming, and ranching.”

“Millions of organic farmers, ranchers, conservationists, and backyard gardeners (supported by millions of organic consumers) are demonstrating that we can build a healthy alternative to industrial agriculture and Food Inc. Our growing organic movement is proving that we can not only feed the world with healthy food, but also reverse global warming, by capturing and sequestering billions of tons of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases in the soil, through plant photosynthesis, composting, cover crops, rotational grazing, wetlands preservation, and reforestation.”

Cummins is the editor of OCA’s website, organicconsumers.org, Organic Bytes newsletters, and Organic View. He also serves on the steering committee of OCA’s Mexico affiliate, Via Organica.

Cummins has been active as a writer and activist since the 1960s, with extensive experience in human rights, anti-war, anti-nuclear, labor, consumer, environmental, and sustainable agriculture campaigns. Over the past decades he has served as director of US and international efforts such as the Pure Food Campaign and the Global Days of Action Against GMOs. From 1992-98 Cummins served as a campaign director for the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C. In 1998, Cummins organized the SOS (Save Organic Standards) Campaign, spearheading the largest consumer grassroots backlash against the US Department of Agriculture in recent history. He is also a frequent lecturer, both in the US and abroad.

Cummins’ visit to Fairfield is sponsored by Sustainability Research Institute, the not-for-profit research arm of The Sky Factory, LC.