Forests Newsroom

It is commonly known among conservation biologists that biodiversity -- or the totality and variability of genes, species and ecosystems of a region -- is integral for optimum health and sustainability of a region. Though it is a term that is arguably clunkier than "sustainability" -- biodiversity is slowly becoming a topic of interest within the sphere of sourcing and design.

"Occupying the food system" has emerged as a rallying cry as activists and movements across the country, from Willie Nelson to more than 60 Occupy groups are turning up the heat on "big food" in nationwide actions today. Across the US, online and offline, thousands will be protesting icons of corporate control over food such as Monsanto and Cargill, and literally occupying vacant lots and tilling long-ignored soils in a mass-scale rejuvenation of community-led food production.

We must Occupy Our Food Supply because corporations are destroying our seed and soil, our water and land, our climate, and biodiversity. Forty percent of the greenhouse gases that are destabilizing the climate right now come from corporate industrial agriculture. Seventy percent of water is wasted for industrial agriculture. Seventy-five percent of biodiversity has been lost due to industrial monocultures.