The Green Party is known for its leadership on environmental issues—it’s in the name, right? But when it comes to the party’s stance on animal regenerative agriculture, Montgomery County Green Co-Lead and Maryland Green Secretary Mary Rooker is sounding the alarm: this is not science, it’s greenwashing.
Rooker, who has a shamanic healing practice and has been vegan for more than 30 years, serves on the Green Party Eco-Action and Animal Rights Committees—she’s been thinking about nature-based systems for a long time. At the 2025 Green Party Annual National Meeting, she presented a scientific review “Environmental Impacts of Regenerative Agriculture: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet” along with Marci Henzi, member of the Animal Rights and the Eco-Action Committees and Delegate to the Green Party of Pennsylvania representing the Green Party of Allegheny County.
In the workshop, Rooker systematically laid out the case for and against animal regenerative agriculture, ultimately illustrating that it is mathematically impossible to meet land requirements for regenerative agriculture that would sustain today’s level of meat consumption. At the same time, she demonstrated the fallacy of arguments that such land allocations would support biodiversity rejuvenation; such arguments overlook the fact that the entire animal agriculture ecosystem—inclusive of the cows, pigs, chickens and the plants they eat—is Eurasian and unsuited to any native U.S. habitat.
Rooker concludes that the only environmentally stable way forward is to universally adopt a diet comprising no more than 10% animal products—a level that could be sustained through regenerative agriculture.
Watch the full workshop here: