Ronnie Cummins is co-founder and International Director of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and its international affiliates Via Organica (Mexico) and Regeneration International. OCA is a non-profit, U.S. based network of two million consumers, dedicated to safeguarding organic standards and promoting a healthy, just, and regenerative system of food, farming, and land use. OCA’s primary strategy is to work on national and global campaigns promoting health, justice, and climate stability that integrate public education, marketplace pressure, media work, litigation, and grassroots lobbying.
Ronnie has been active as a writer and activist since the 1960s, with extensive experience in public education, grassroots mobilization, and marketplace pressure campaigns. Over the past three decades he has served as director of US and international campaigns dealing with agriculture issues including organic standards, food safety, genetic engineering, factory farming, and global warming. In 2009 he co-founded Via Organica, a network of organic consumers and farmers based in Mexico City and San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. In 2015 he co-founded Regeneration International, a global network dedicated to mitigating and reversing climate change through regenerative food, farming and land use. He is a frequent lecturer, both in the US and abroad, as well as a regular contributor to online publications such as Organic Bytes, Common Dreams, Mercola.com, Truthout, Alternet, Counterpunch, and Eco-Watch. He is the author of a series of children’s books called Children of the World, as well as the book Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers (Marlowe & Company 2004). His new book, Grassroots Rising: A Call to Action on Climate, Farming, Food, and a Green New Deal will be published by Chelsea Green in February 2020. Cummins lives with his wife and 21-year-old son in Minnesota and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.