Allan Savory is President and Co-founder of the Savory Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

"Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes -- and his work so far shows -- that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert. Published on Mar 4, 2013

Physicist Lee Smolin talks about how the scientific community works: as he puts it, "we fight and argue as hard as we can," but everyone accepts that the next generation of scientists will decide who's right. And, he says, that's how democracy works, too. More of his lectures on his Website here.

Is the future fixed? The Perimeter Institute founder rethinks the nature of the universe in his new book, Time Reborn. With Robert J. Sawyer. Visit www.torontopubliclibrary.ca.Published on May 17, 2013

To order his book from Amazon click on the image or visit your local bookstore. Thank  you.

Democracy Now for today, May 20th reports on the hundreds of farmworkers and their supporters who are in New York City ahead of Wendy's shareholder meeting to ask for improved working conditions for those who pick its tomatoes in the Fair Food campaign organized by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. CIW farmworker and organizer, Gerardo Reyes-Chavez talks about the campaign.  So far McDonald's, Subway, Burger King and Taco Bell have all joined the White House-recognized Social Responsibility Program, agreeing to pay an extra penny per pound of tomatoes to raise wages and only buy from fields where workers' rights are respected.

Business and Human Rights, Corporate Social Responsibility

The fifteen-day, 200-mile March for Rights, Respect, and Fair Food came to a loud, colorful, and jubilant end on Sunday, March 17th outside Publix corporate headquarters in Lakeland, Florida.

Fair food, respecting agricultural workers here in the United State, is the focus of Lucas Benitez, Co-Director, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group that has been very successful at getting Corporations and growers to sign a code of conduct with new  zero tolerance for slavery, sexual harrassment, and right to form their own health and safety conditions. Follow their actions on their YouTube channel here.

Mr. Benitez spoke at the Mary Robinson Speaker Series in November 2002.

Domingo Peas is the community leader of the Sharamentsa,
Achuar Territory, Ecuador, South America.  He talks about humans being required to respect the forest because here we have all the ecosystem. For the Ochoa, in the forest we have our power. Through our ancestors, we give positive energy for all the force that we have. In this sense we fight to defend ourselves because the forest is not just for the Ochoa, it is for all of humanity, for all of the countries that exist on this planet.

We have to do positive work for the new generation.

Interviewed by Barry Heidt of Sustainability Action Media (SAM) with the help of EarthSayers.tv and Pachamama Alliance in February, 2013.  English translation in progress.

Hilario Saant is a community leader in Kapawi Achuar Territory in Ecuador, South America.  He tells, firsthand, the story of his community around the issue of oil extraction and its destruction of community and the forest.  Interviewed by Barry Heidt of Sustainability Action Media with the help of EarthSayers.tv and the Pachamama Alliance in February 2013.   English translation in process.

The United States Supreme Court ruled Monday (May 2013) in favor of biotech giant Monsanto, closing the door on a patent case that has pitted a smalltime farmer from Indiana against a titan of the agriculture industry.

The high court said early Monday that 75-year-old farmer Vernon Bowman of Indiana violated Monsanto’s patent rights when he purchased a mix of seeds from a grain elevator that he later planted on his Midwest farm. This is his story in his own words from February, 2013 interview covered in the Huffington Post.