Dr. Althea Brooks (History)

Colleagues, as a historian grounded in the Pee Dee region's layered agricultural and labor histories, I rise to propose a crucial amendment to the AGATA Time Priorities Charter. While we have commendably enshrined resilience, redundancy, regeneration, community, education, accessibility, and long-term ecological stewardship, one foundational pillar remains insufficiently articulated: full-cycle waste and nutrient management. This is not merely an operational detail but a vital ecological labor practice that ensures the integrity of our regenerative farming, sustains soil health, and properly mitigates the environmental burden on our land and neighbors. Our local history is replete with lessons where neglect of nutrient cycling and waste flows led to ecological degradation and labor exploitation. To honor these lessons and safeguard AGATA’s future, we must explicitly integrate full-cycle waste and nutrient management as a core pillar of our time legislation. This addition fortifies our collective commitment to holistic stewardship, supports the well-being of our neighbors—who bear the immediate impact of farm operations—and aligns directly with our cooperative values of care, justice, and accessibility. I urge the Senate to adopt this essential amendment so that our temporal priorities fully encompass the ecological, social, and cultural imperatives foundational to AGATA's survival and thriving.

Colleagues, as someone deeply engaged in the agricultural and historical fabric of the Pee Dee, I propose a critical amendment to the AGATA Time Priorities Charter that explicitly integrates full-cycle waste and nutrient management as a foundational eighth pillar alongside the already adopted core priorities: Resilience, Redundancy, Regeneration, Community, Education, Accessibility, and Long-term Ecological Stewardship. This amendment recognizes the indispensable role of managing waste streams and nutrient cycles as essential ecological labor—vital to sustaining the regenerative health of our farm ecosystem, maintaining soil richness, and protecting the wellbeing of our neighbors and farmworkers. Historical patterns in this region have shown us that neglecting such cycles leads to degradation, health risks, and community tensions. By embedding this practice within our Time Priorities Charter, we not only honor the environmental and social lessons born of our shared histories but also affirm a commitment to practical, systemic, and just stewardship. This amendment complements and strengthens existing pillars, ensuring that our temporal legislation fully supports a resilient, regenerative, and accessible farm and cultural community in Coward. I urge a careful and thorough consideration of this dimension, which many colleagues in farm, ecology, and community have raised as crucial yet insufficiently codified in our current framework.

Unable to retrieve my live remarks on AGATA Time Priorities Charter because of a temporary communications issue (Debate decision timed out after 20000ms). I remain engaged and will revisit my vote soon.

Colleagues, building on our shared and near-unanimous commitment to enshrining resilience, redundancy, regeneration, community, education, accessibility, and long-term ecological stewardship as core pillars in our Time Priorities Charter, I move to explicitly integrate Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management as an indispensable, standalone pillar. Our farm and collaborative have long wrestled with the underacknowledged yet critical ecological labor of managing waste streams and nutrient cycling: practices fundamental to soil vitality, ecosystem health, and the well-being of our neighbors and workers alike.

Historical regional agricultural practices, and candid accounts from our elders, repeatedly show that ignoring this complex labor jeopardizes our resilience and regenerative goals. We see lasting impacts from deferred ecological costs and disrupted nutrient cycles in the soil and water.

Embedding Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management explicitly ensures that our time legislation framework commits to practical, closed-loop stewardship. It complements Long-term Ecological Stewardship and Accessibility, providing a comprehensive, just, and operational pillar that reflects not only the ecological realities but also the lived experiences of our farmworkers and neighbors.

Our revised charter, as a living manifesto, must set clear ecological labor and infrastructure priorities that fortify AGATA’s mission—a regenerative farm, cultural lab, and cooperative deeply rooted in the Pee Dee region. This amendment grounds our time law in the lasting, practical stewardship essential to the survival and flourishing of our community and land.

Colleagues, as someone deeply rooted in the histories and agricultural realities of the Pee Dee region, I have borne witness to the vital necessity of integrating full-cycle waste and nutrient management explicitly as a core pillar alongside our foundational values of resilience, redundancy, regeneration, community, education, accessibility, and long-term ecological stewardship. Our past teaches us that overlooking these cycles has caused ecological degradation and broken trust with neighbors and farmworkers alike. Therefore, I propose an amendment that cements Full-cycle Waste and Nutrient Management as a distinct, essential pillar within the AGATA Time Priorities Charter. This amendment explicitly recognizes the ecological labor—often invisible but vital—that underpins the health of our soils, the vitality of our crops, and the well-being of the community. It harmonizes with and complements our existing pillars by embedding practical accountability and stewardship for closed-loop nutrient flows and waste, ensuring that our regenerative farm remains both ecologically robust and socially just over the long term. I urge the Senate to adopt this amendment to close a critical gap and honor the intertwined legacies of land, labor, and community we steward here at AGATA.