Meet Our First Cohort of Climate Farmers
Use the tabs to learn about each farm and click on the EAR to hear a brief audio interview with the farmer!
- Cedar Circle Farm & Education Center
- Cedar Mountain Farm
- Green Mountain Girls Farm
- Kiss The Cow Farm
- Luna Bleu Farm
- Moon and Stars
- Open Woods Farm
- Root 5 Farm
- Silloway Maple
- Sunrise Organic Farm
- Sweetland Farm
- Walpole Valley Farms
- Winter Street Farm
Cedar Circle Farm and Education Center
225 Pavillion Rd., East Thetford, VT
(802) 785-4737
www.cedarcirclefarm.org
Art by Cecily Anderson
Products: Certified Organic produce, fruit, flowers and nursery
Where to buy: Farmstand and Cafe open April-December (hours online)
“We are dedicated to agricultural scientific research in the public interest, and to providing agricultural education and training.
Over the 20 years of our existence, the Farm’s practices have evolved to incorporate regenerative organic farming, which works to restore soil health, and in turn, the health of plants, people, and the planet.
An entire ecosystem of microorganisms and fungi exists below our feet! Thriving soil life draws carbon out of the atmosphere and fixes it into the soil, thereby restoring a natural carbon sink. Carbon sinks are good! They benefit soil health and plant growth while lowering greenhouse gas emissions in the process.
To support healthy, resilient soil, we are transitioning to no-till farming. This goes hand in hand with our use of cover crops, which are planted in between main cash crop cycles. The seed mixture is specifically chosen to fix nutrients into the soil that the past cash crop has used or that the next crop will need. Cover crops also create a blanket of plant matter that protects soil and inhibits weed growth. Common cover crops at Cedar Circle Farm are winter rye and hairy vetch, oats and peas, or yellow clover.
We regularly test our soils for organic matter (think carbon!) and nutrients, and enhance plant and soil health with Korean Natural Farming methods.”
Cedar Mountain Farm
Stephen Leslie + Kerry Gawalt
25A Linden Rd, Hartland, VT
802-436-1448
cedarmountainfarm.org
Art by Janet McKenzie
Products: Milk, cheese, beef, vegetables, herbs
Where to buy: Order online and pick up, farm stand open Thursdays year round, milk available 7 days a week.
In 10 years, we can build 10 inches of topsoil that took literally hundreds to thousands of years for the forest to do.
Trying to farm and survive in the cutthroat capitalist system that we have is hard enough, and then to ask farmers, ‘And on top of that, we want you to regenerate your land, we want you to restore habitat, we want you to sequester carbon and offer us clean air and biodiversity and water to drink and healthy local food to eat…’
We need society to recognize that we are frontline workers in a climate and biodiversity emergency, and that we need to be compensated for all this work that we’re doing. To be incentivized so we can do it more deeply and profoundly, and afford to be able to pay young people a living wage so that they can come work on the farm and learn these skills that we’re gleaning.
[One thing people can do is] if you’re in Vermont, advocate for a Payment for Ecosystem Services program: a transformative step towards a re-localized, sovereign food system and a restored climate-resilient habitat.
Our farms can become places not only of food production, but also mitigation of the worst effects of abrupt, irreversible climate change. This is our path forward. There’s no amount of technology or electric cars, or renewable energy sources that are going to get us through this without focusing on land repair, and resiliency in our landscape.
We want to restore the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, we want to restore these cycles of this living, breathing planet. It takes the forest on its own about 120 years to become a forest biome, an integrated ecosystem moving towards mutual symbiosis and complexity. And [farmers] can do that faster than that natural process—maybe not better, and maybe not fully mimic its splendor and its magnificence and complexity. But in 10 years, we can build 10 inches of topsoil that took literally hundreds to thousands of years for the forest to do.”
—Stephen Leslie
Green Mountain Girls Farm
Mari Omland + Laura Olsen
923 Loop Road, Northfield, VT
(802) 505-9840
eatstayfarm.com
Art by LMNOPI
Products: Pasture-raised meats and regenerative veggies, fruits and more. Farm stays & tours.
Where to buy: Farm shares, seasonal farmstand, and Northfield Farmers Market.
We started this farm because we wanted to be part of eating differently and helping other people to be a more responsible species in our ecosystem. From the beginning, we were interested in making sure that our practices forwarded that outcome, paying attention to how we’re impacting our neighbors, whether they be human neighbors, or the toad sitting on top of a pepper in here the other day.
You see this knoll here? Water that drips on top of that knoll comes this way to beautiful mountain streams, heads down to the Winooski river, and ends up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. But on the other side of that knoll, water that falls winds up in Long Island Sound through the White River and Connecticut River system.
Up here, it’s not spoiled yet. We have to do our part to send it downstream as clean as it comes here.
And we want to be cycling carbon, to try to right the wrongs of our industrial society. Can humans [alone] do it? No. Can we do it with everything else in our ecosystem? These oats are photosynthesizing, gregariously sharing sugar out to their roots. And it’s creating this spontaneous assemblage of microorganisms that are hanging out right there at the root. I think we’re only capable of doing it if we’re in community with and working closely in association with everything down to the microbes that are glomming on to these roots.
So, can we as humans eat more responsibly? Can we do something that’s really different? Yes, with our feet standing here in this place, and looking to these microbes. The connections are all there. And we’re just plugging into it.
These practices and connecting responsibly with our local ecology take a lot of decision making and a lot of labor.
But at the end of the day, we’re committed to growing food that does not outsource environmental catastrophe or even just negative environmental impacts.
This is regeneration.”
—Mari Omland
Kiss The Cow Farm
Lisa + Randy Robar
2248 Royalton Turnpike, Barnard, VT
www.kissthecowfarm.com
Art by Cecily Anderson
Products: Certified Organic, grass-fed, A2 raw & pasteurized milk; ice cream; vegetables.
Where to buy: Farm store is always open at 2248 Royalton Turnpike, Barnard, VT. CSA available. Products sold at various Upper Valley farmers markets and retailers. www.kissthecowfarm.com
How we raise animals has a profound effect on the climate! Most beef and dairy operations in the U.S. keep cows in confinement and feed them grain, not grass. The carbon footprint of these operations is huge. But if they are managed correctly, cows become an asset in fighting climate change.
Here’s how Kiss The Cow farm is drawing down carbon, building resilient soils, and offsetting the methane associated with dairy production.
100% grass fed pastured cows
Our cows eat grass year round, not corn that has been industrially grown. Through photosynthesis, grass moves carbon from the atmosphere into the soil. Fields used to grow corn for cattle emit carbon when they are plowed and chemically treated. We let our solar-charged, organic pastures feed the cows—and the myriad insects, animals and microbes that live there too. This allows them to actually store carbon in the soil.
Rotational grazing
We rotate our cows through a series of pasture areas, which allows the grass to regrow and establish deeper roots, improving soil health while drawing carbon deep into the soil. Managed grazing land can sequester 0.5–3 metric tons of carbon per acre each year! More carbon and more roots in the ground boosts the ability of the soil to support vigorous, nutritious food for the cows. High-quality food, in turn, is digested more easily, lowering cows’ methane emissions.
Methane mitigation
While all cows emit methane, properly managed pastures offset these emissions with the carbon they capture. Bacteria in the soil called methanotrophs oxidize some of the methane emitted by grazing cows. Manure left on pasture tends to produce less methane than waste accumulated on feedlots. We also feed our cows seaweed, which studies have found reduces methane production by 80 percent.”
—Randy Robar
Luna Bleu Farm
Suzanne Long and Tim Sanford
96 Boles Rd, South Royalton, VT
www.lunableufarm.org
Art by Katie Runde
Products: Organic vegetables, chicken, and eggs
Where to buy: CSA memberships; Norwich Farmers Market, South Royalton Market
By fostering a vibrant, healthy soil ecosystem, farms can help sequester carbon in the soil and be part of the solution to climate change—but treat soil like dirt, and we’re part of the problem.
A healthy soil with good plant cover or mulch protection also makes the land more resilient with the extremes of heavy rains and droughts. It absorbs water like a sponge (helping to reduce flooding) and holds moisture longer in dry times. Healthy soil is also the secret to flavorful, nutrient-dense food.
We’re trying to feed this world population with a system that is not part of the world’s ecological system. When we create a farm, that’s a different mindset from “we are part of this ecosystem.” As farmers, we are already messing with the natural ecology, we’re already compromising in terms of some of these cycles that we’re trying to promote.
But we’re trying to do our best to build systems that mimic natural systems. How do we move to a system that can fit into what the world can tolerate? A more self-cycling system, as opposed to a system that relies on outside inputs, relies on us mining peatbogs or getting green sand from New Jersey.
Talking to folks about soil stuff, I often link it to human nutrition. If we eat good food, if we eat a nutritious, well balanced diet, we’ll be healthier, our bodies will be able to resist disease, etc. The same is true with soil health. Soil health is the foundation of the nutritional value of the plants and soil health is dependent on ecological health. So people understand that the choices that they’re making are feeding into this system of health as opposed to a system of unhealth.
Some of the projections for more extreme [weather], more drought, more flooding more—you know—are dire. It’s really easy to start feeling helpless, feeling like you have no agency. But we are asking people to join us to do something. It is giving hope. I don’t know if it’s possible, but we have to do something, right? How can we all move forward together? Join us.”
—Suzanne Long
Moon and Stars
Hernando Jaramillo
Moon and Stars at Black Lives Matter House, 53 Park St. South Royalton, VT
www.moonandstarsvt.org
Art by Misoo Bang
Products: Moon and Stars arepas, made from regeneratively grown corn
Where to buy: Upper Valley Food Co-op, South Royalton Market, Free Verse Farm Shop, Littleton Co-op, Cedar Circle Farm, and other farm stands. Retail location opening soon in South Royalton.
I fell in love with arepas in the big corn production area in Colombia where I was living. We have 60 different types of arepas in Colombia. I saw the change when the Free Trade Agreement started, and you started noticing this terrible corn and it was not the same.
All these big corporations adopted corn as a tool to killing all these cultures and instating this white masa made out of white GMO corn that has been replicated all over the world.
Corn is one of the elements [of Moon and Stars] but it’s not the whole vision of the project. The idea is to create a food system that will bring back ancient cultural food and bring quality of life to the farmers.
We need to create a system that will bring equity to the people in farms, people in the food industry. And the state has to be willing to help the food system. People that work in the food industry make 20 bucks an hour or 15 bucks an hour and a plumber makes $200 an hour. You know, how is that? How’s that fair? The food system needs some kind of subsidy or help by the state.
We have to teach people about the value of really good food for humanity, and for climate change. Production of food in a regenerative manner, that’s the key to solve these issues.
By putting money ahead of the health of our soil and our planet, we’ll never get out of it. I’m discouraged sometimes because we don’t have no more time to do shit. I’m 59 years old. And I’m not gonna wait until somebody, some politician has the brains to enforce or think about this whole process. People have to become unselfish and create models that really align with what we’re experiencing right now. I don’t align with any ideologies. I just think of what makes sense.”
—Nando Jaramillo
Open Woods Farm
Sayer Palmer
1061 Kinsman Highway
Grafton, NH
www.openwoods.net
Art by Joan Hanley
Products: Certified Organic vegetables, eggs, maple syrup
Where to buy: Where to buy: CSA memberships, Canaan Farmers’ and Artisans’ Market, Online Market
Off-grid, solar-powered, minimal-tillage, soil-based, gravity-fed, micro-irrigation, on-farm composting, cover cropping, season extension… it all happens here. But none of these efforts matter without a farm business that is community based.
Connecting with the community through a commitment to local markets and a stake in the local economy has shifted climate conversations from a politicized national level to a meaningful community level. When a neighbor’s well-being is affected by unprecedented drought or overwhelming rain, activism around systemic change becomes less radical and more urgent.
Open Woods is a Certified Organic vegetable farm on the side of the hill in the middle of a forest. I grow a huge amount of food on half an acre of land and sell almost exclusively to the Mascoma Valley region of New Hampshire. My priority is community-centered farming: direct sales, mutual aid shares, food scrap collection, honest conversation, and sharing joy in beautiful food.”
—Sayer Palmer
Root 5 Farm
Danielle Allen + Ben Dana
2340 US Rte. 5 N., Fairlee, VT
(802) 923-6339
root5farm.com
Art by Cecily Anderson
Products: Certified Organic vegetables, Powerkraut
Where to buy: CSA shares available.
Co-op Food Stores and multiple independent food markets around the Upper Valley.
How farmers farm—and how eaters eat—impacts the climate!
For example, tilling, bare soil, and the use of synthetic chemicals release climate pollution into the atmosphere. They reduce soil’s resilience to extreme weather like heavy rain and drought, and lead to less nutritious food. This makes industrial agriculture a top contributor to global warming, and a profound threat to long-term food security and health.
No synthetic chemicals
Synthetic fertilizer releases N2O, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than CO2. Agrochemicals can kill the microbes and fungi in the soil that give it a sponge-like structure that absorbs water and stores soil carbon, and that help plants to access nutrients.
Mulches and cover crops
Bare soil erodes easily, absorbs heat, and releases carbon, so we keep it covered with mulches and cover crops. We grow about 7 acres of cover crops each year. Cover crops feed the soil by drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere and secreting it through their roots, feeding fungi that in turn deliver mineral nutrients to the plants.
Crop rotations
We rotate crops to manage pests, diseases, and nutrients to support plant health.
Nurture biodiversity
Silloway Maple
Paul Silloway, Marilyn Lambert + Paul Lambert
Not pictured: Bette Silloway
1303 Boudro Rd., Randolph Center, VT
802-272-6249
www.sillowaymaple.com
Art by Katie Runde
Products: Solar- and wood-powered maple products
Where to buy: Online and at the Sugarhouse Store, open for tours and sales Monday–Saturday, 10–5
Maple products take a lot of energy to make!
Here’s what climate stewardship looks like at Silloway Maple.
We use reverse osmosis processing.
We pump raw sap through semi-permeable membranes to remove part of the water, sending the concentrated sugar and minerals to our traditional wood-fired evaporator. In our size maple operation, without the R.O., it would take approximately 1,000 cords of firewood to produce 12,000 gallons of maple syrup. With it, it only takes about 50 cords. ‘Only’ said to show you the comparison—50 cords is still a lot to cut, split, bundle, move again, and throw, piece by piece, into the arch at sugaring time!
We are solar powered.
Our sugar shack is equipped with solar panels that power the reverse osmosis and farm store.
We conserve a working forest.
—Adapted from the Climate Farmer Stories calendar, in consultation with Bette Lambert
Sunrise Organic Farm
Chuck Wooster
1759 North Hartland Road
White River Jct., VT
www.sunrisefarmvt.com
Art by Danielle Festa
Products: Certified Organic vegetables, chicken, eggs, lamb, and maple syrup
Where to buy: CSA memberships available in the spring;
farmstand open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11-6, May-October
We have a compost and solar facility that we built a couple years ago, that we call our ‘carbon management facility.’ We’re generating power, and hopefully generating a lot of organic material here.
One of our farm members started a curbside food scrap pickup service about three years ago. She lives in Wilder, which is a suburban part of town, so she quickly ran out of space in her compost bins in the backyard. So, she said, ‘Could I dump some of it here?’ That started a multiyear process. She and I did a crowdsourcing campaign and raised about $5,000. And we used that and went to the state and got a grant for $20,000, to help build this building. I decided at the same time to put up this photovoltaic system here, so this roof does about 85% of our electricity for the two farms together. So that’s been fantastic. And I hope that 10 years from now, most of our vehicles will be plugged in.
The pile sits in the bay for four weeks and when it comes out the far side, we can use it right away. For anything. It’s organic certified. We had gotten into the classic problem of spending a couple, 3,000 bucks a year on a bunch of bagged amendments; we didn’t have enough organic material of our own. So between that, and presumably we’re gonna see some yield increases from the healthier soil, and the more organic matter.
What happens is Jen brings her buckets and big totes, our CSA members drop off their food scraps over by the stairs. They get out of their car, they can drop their stuff, get their fresh veggies and bring the old stuff back. It’s a super cool closed loop.”
—Chuck Wooster
Sweetland Farm
Norah Lake
742 Route 132, Norwich, VT
sweetlandfarmvt.com
(802) 376-5945
Art by Cecily Anderson
Products: Organic vegetables, fruit, pastured meat and hay
Where to buy: Sweetland Farmstand; CSA shares available.
Right from the get-go, working to have a farm that has positive climate and environmental impacts has been important.
But in 2018 we made a pledge to reduce the whole farm’s carbon emissions by 90% over the course of ten years. We were really excited when we sat down in the winter to figure out how we could really reduce our carbon emissions and saw that it was going to be pretty doable.
Not only are our CSA members excited about the pledge, but that’s one of the main excitement points that I hear from people who want to come join our team. We’d like to become a model for other businesses, whether they’re farms or restaurants or the local general store.
We have put a big focus into installing a whole bunch of solar panels, insulating our farm crew housing, switching from gas and diesel irrigation pumps to electric irrigation pumps, and—really exciting—I think we are going to be the first farm in Vermont to have a high-horsepower electric tractor. It would not only cultivate weeds, which is a fairly low-horsepower activity, but actually be able to mow and tet and bale the hay that we’re making.
I think that being a customer of a local farm is a great way for individuals to have an impact on the environment. Sometimes it feels like driving your recycling to the transfer station is a drop in the bucket but sourcing your food locally for six, eight, 12 months of the year does have an impact. There’s something to be said for the cumulative impact of a community farm. Multiple people getting their food from this small farm enables the farm to have a farther-reaching impact than if each of us was trying to just raise our food through a garden. We can pool our resources and be the galvanizers—a cooperative environmental presence.
For example, part of our farm is along the Ompompanoosuc River. Traditionally, our hay field went pretty much right up to the edge of the river, and there was pretty significant erosion happening along the riverbank. So we put in a riparian buffer planting of 100 baby shrubs along the river, that will not only keep our soil on the farm where it belongs, it will provide habitat for wildlife, and shade the river in the summer, which is good for fish. That’s just another example of the ecosystem services our farm can help provide.”
—Norah Lake
Walpole Valley Farms
Chris + Caitlin Caserta
Pictured: Ozzie Mae, farm staff
663 Wentworth Road, Walpole, NH
(603) 852-4772
www.walpolevalleyfarms.com
Art by Misoo Bang
Products: Pasture raised meat: chicken, pork, beef, lamb, turkey
Where to buy: Order online for weekly delivery. Farm store open weekends 10-4. Visit the Inn and The Hungry Diner, our farm-to-table restaurant, year round.
What does climate stewardship look like on our farm?
These are some of our farm practices that help pull carbon out of the air, create more nutrient-dense food, and make our farm more resilient in the face of extreme weather.
No synthetic fertilizers or pesticides
By feeding our cows grass, we’re creating high quality food without the environmental costs of conventional grain production. Synthetic fertilizer releases N2O, a very powerful greenhouse gas, and when it runs off of fields it pollutes waterways. Pesticides and herbicides kill pollinators, microbes and fungi in the soil that give it a spongey, absobent structure, and help plants access nutrients.
100% grass-fed and grass-finished
It is typical for cows in the U.S. to be fed grain grown with synthetic agrochemicals, which carries a large carbon footprint, and kept in feedlots, rather than on pasture. Our cows graze and eat what they evolved to eat: grass.
Intensively managed grazing
We move our cattle through pastures frequently so grass can recover and develop deep roots. Through photosynthesis, grass brings CO2 out of the atmosphere and feeds it into the soil, where it sustains a healthy soil microbiome that resists drought and erosion, and grows nutritious forage for our animals. The result is healthy animals, a healthy ecosystem, and nutrient-dense farm products.
—Adapted from the Climate Farmer Stories calendar, in consultation with Caitlin Caserta
Winter Street Farm
Abby Clarke + Jonathan Hayden
344 Winter Street, Claremont, NH
(774) 454-7637
winterstreetfarm.com
Art by Cecily Anderson
Products: Certified Organic vegetables, herbs & flowers
Where to buy: CSA shares available in early spring. Farmstand open to members & the public:
Tu/Thu 2-7pm & Sat 10am-3pm
For us, regenerative means no-till. We’re trying to encourage the ecosystem as it evolved in the first place, and then it can grow the plant for you. It’s not that simple, but it also probably can be. The soil can feed the plant.
We spent a really long time not paying attention to that relationship. The plant is interacting with the microbes in the soil, and that’s giving it access to the nutrients that it needs. The living stuff in the soil is actively fixing carbon and increasing your organic matter.
The soil ecosystem dies off when you have barren soil. Something needs to be growing in the ground at all times.
We don’t have to weed things, which is crazy. You always have something growing in the bed so densely that weeds don’t come up. Everything we were doing with heavy tillage cultivation organic agriculture just made everything so much harder. And it was fighting an uphill battle the entire time: you’re spending all of your time killing weeds in a system that’s creating more weeds, and you never win. And then the soil goes away, because you’re constantly stripping it of organic matter. And then you’re increasing your fertilizer costs. I mean, it’s crazy.
[Our farm is] not going to feel the effects of climate change in the way that other [farms] do. It’s insanely water-resilient. We can go through a drought just fine. We don’t need to water every day. It’s just so obvious to see a bed with a cover crop in it versus a bed that is just soil: the soil just dries out and desiccates. And the bed that has living stuff in it, the root systems hold the water in the bed.
We’re able to produce a lot more food per acre, like an insane amount more. This [1.5 acre farm] is probably a five-acre farm in a normal system.
We are more resilient as farmers and the ecosystem that we’re cultivating is more resilient to both what it has to deal with on a daily basis and the climate fluctuations it’s going to have to deal with in the future.”
—Abby Clarke
Farming & Climate
Addressing climate change through food requires us to get back to the roots of farming. Healthy soil creates nutritious food and climate resilience.
How does “Industrial Agriculture” Affect the Climate?
The vast majority of the food Americans eat comes from industrially farmed land, here and abroad. Conventional industrial farming depletes soils and is responsible for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Most farms that supply American consumers rely on pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, and tilling. Tilling releases huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and depletes the soil of microbial life. Without microbes and fungi to exchange nutrients with, crops require increasing amounts of synthetic fertilizer, which creates nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than CO2. Confined animal feeding operations are a large source of methane emissions.
Excess tillage and chemicals threaten our food security. Depleted of life, the soil loses its structure and is less able to absorb and retain water, making it vulnerable to drought, flooding, and erosion. Since farmers began tilling the land in the Midwest 160 years ago, 57.6 billion metric tons of topsoil have eroded; at that rate of soil loss, the earth’s farmland could sustain only 60 more harvests.*
(*Smithsonian Magazine)
How Can Farming Benefit the Climate?
Farmers can help draw heat-trapping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere by building healthy soils. Soil restoration is an essential part of climate change mitigation. Soils hold 5 times more carbon than the atmosphere, so even small increases in soil organic matter remove significant amounts of carbon from the air and help to cool the planet.
How does it work? Photosynthesis! Plants use the sun’s energy to pull CO2 out of the air and transform it into the sugars they need to grow. They secrete some of those sugars and other carbon compounds through their roots to feed billions of soil microbes. In exchange, microbes mine and deliver specific nutrients and minerals that plants require. Some soil microbes feast on decomposing plants and animal waste, turning it into humus, the dark organic matter indicative of fertile soil. As soil microbes die, their remains accumulate to create more humus. Humus-rich soil draws heat-trapping carbon out of the air and puts it to work sustaining healthy, nutrient dense food crops and a vast web of life.
In the NASA data visualization, notice that the highest emissions of CO2 in the northern hemisphere occur during spring planting, when soil is being turned over and organic matter and microorganisms exposed to the air, and the lowest levels are during high summer, when plants are performing peak photosynthesis.
It’s the How, Not the Cow
How can cows be good for the climate?
Industrial livestock management is harmful to the environment, but it’s not the only option. Managed grazing where animals are on pasture their entire lives restores fertility to soil, which increases photosynthesis and draws CO2 into the ground.
As soil becomes carbon-rich, it captures and holds more rain. This reduces flooding while replenishing dried-up rivers, helping to create a safer and more resilient climate future. Grazing animals in a way that mimics natural herd movement has even been used to reverse desertification.
Peer-reviewed scientific studies show effective grazing management can capture, or “draw down,” 1 to 3 tons of carbon per acre each year. Properly done, grazing removes more than enough carbon from the air to compensate for an animal’s enteric (intestine-based) methane emissions. Healthy soil contains bacteria that metabolize (consume) methane. Methane from ruminant animals like cows is only an issue of concern in the context of concentrated animal feeding operations, not when livestock are living naturally on pasture, managed in ways that improve soil health and biodiversity.
Source: Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition
Five Guidelines for Growing Healthy Soils
- Keep living roots in the ground.
Maintain living roots in soil as long as possible throughout the year. Take a walk in the spring and you will see green plants poking their way through the last of the snow. Follow the same path in late fall or early winter and you will still see green, growing plants, which is a sign of living roots. Those living plants are photosynthesizing and feeding soil biology by providing its basic food source: carbon. This biology, in turn, fuels the nutrient cycle that feeds plants. Look for crops that grow longer. Plan to plant another crop before one ends, or immediately after. Grow more perennial plants.
- Keep soil covered at all times.
This is a critical step toward rebuilding soil health. Bare soil is an anomaly—nature always works to cover soil as quickly as possible. Providing a natural “coat of armor” protects soil from wind and water erosion while providing food and habitat for macro- and microorganisms. It will also prevent moisture evaporation and germination of weed seeds.
- Minimize disturbance.
Limit mechanical, chemical, and physical disturbance of soil. Tillage—turning over and breaking up soil—destroys soil structure. It is constantly tearing apart the “house” that nature builds to protect the living organisms in the soil that create natural fertility. Soil structure includes aggregates and pore spaces (openings that allow water to infiltrate the soil). The result of tillage is soil erosion, the wasting of a precious natural resource. Synthetic fertilizers, herbi-cides, pesticides, and fungicides all have negative impacts on life in the soil as well.
- Maximize Diversity.
Strive for diversity of both plant and animal species. Where in nature does one find monocultures? Only where humans have put them! In a natural prairie or pasture, different types of plants like grasses, forbs, legumes, and shrubs all live and thrive in harmony with each other. Think of what each of these species has to offer. Some have shallow roots, some deep, some fibrous, some tap. Some are high-carbon, some are low-carbon, some are legumes. Each of them plays a role in maintaining soil health. Diversity enhances ecosystem function.
- Integrate animals.
Nature does not function without animals. Ever. It is that simple. Integrating livestock into an operation provides many benefits. The major benefit is that the grazing of plants stimulates the plants to pump more carbon into the soil. This drives nutrient cycling by feeding biology. Of course, it also has a major, positive impact on climate change by cycling more carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it into the soil. And if you want a healthy, functioning ecosystem you must provide a home and habitat for not only farm animals but also pollinators, predator insects, earthworms, and all of the microbiology that drive ecosystem function.
What Can Individuals Do?
Buying from Climate Farmers = Climate Action!
Inspiring Reading
Mounting research shows the benefits of implementing organic farming practices as a solution to climate change. Browse these resources to learn more about what practices matter and why!
Organic Farming Research Foundation
Remember This!
- The ways we grow what we all eat either hurts or helps the climate and our planet. Producers and eaters alike have agency in demanding change through food choices, policy and investments.
- Everyone can be a climate hero by eating from local climate farms.
- The food system includes everyone, so it is everyone’s responsibility to create a food system that is good for people and the planet.
- People can choose how to spend their food dollars. Investing in local food from climate-conscious farmers is an investment in personal health, community, and climate action.
Make Your Garden a Carbon Sink
The world’s agricultural soils have lost at least half of their original carbon since the dawn of farming some 10,000 years ago, the result of deforestation, plowing, burning, and mismanaged grazing (and, more recently, application of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides). Although atmospheric carbon cannot readily be converted back into coal, oil, and natural gas, it can be returned to soil.
More than 40 percent of living organisms in terrestrial ecosystems spend at least part of their lives in the soil. When soil is disturbed, microorganisms and plant debris are brought to the surface, where they decompose and release carbon into the atmosphere.
Turn your garden into a carbon sink! Organic no-till farming and gardening foregoes tilling, or turning over the soil. This protects the soil microorganisms, and keeps the carbon they contain in the ground, while allowing plants to draw down more carbon.
Limit soil disturbance in your garden and yard to boost soil health, increase water-holding capacity, grow more nutrient-dense food, and to store carbon safely underground.
Layer organic matter such as mulches or compost on top rather than turning it into the soil. Let the worms and bugs do the work for you!
Compost
30-40% of food that farmers around the world produce is never consumed!
Home composting is easy to do, reduces your trash, and helps reduce methane and other greenhouse gases from landfills. Leaves, grass, woody clippings, dead plants, and food scraps make excellent compost ingredients. Garden compost acts like humus and feeds the soil microbes that sequester carbon and improve soil fertility. You can use compost in your garden as a substitute for synthetic fertilizers, which destroy soil organisms. Compost also makes excellent mulch and can substitute for peat-based potting or seed-starting mixes. You can never have too much compost in the garden!
Use peat-free potting soils and seed-starting mixes
Peat bogs play an essential role on our planet. While they cover only 3 percent of the earth’s surface, they store some 500 metric gigatons of carbon. This is the equivalent of 67 percent of all the CO2 in the air, or all the CO2 held in the world’s boreal forestland, which makes up 10 percent of the earth’s surface. It can take thousands of years for a peat bog to form. Leaving them undisturbed—instead of mining the peat moss—keeps carbon safely in the ground.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-peat-bogs-defy-laws-biodiversity.html
Make Your Yard Maintenance More Climate-Friendly
Lawns act as net carbon emitters over the long term. But you can reduce your lawn’s climate impacts or even sequester carbon with it if you:
- Use a push mower or electric mower instead of a gasoline-powered one. An average gas-powered lawnmower puts 90 pounds of CO2 into the air every year.
- Avoid synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Their manufacture emits climate pollution, and the application of fertilizer creates the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Instead, leave grass clippings in the grass, and allow moderate leaf litter to remain in the fall, for free, easy fertilizer. Add compost for an extra boost.
- Diversify lawn plants. Diverse, regionally suited species help create the conditions for future healthy, lush lawns that absorb carbon. It is best to apply seed in the fall and spring to out-compete other vegetation. Make sure that seed mixes have legumes, like clover, in them to help naturally add nitrogen to the entire lawn. Try a conservation mix.
- Mow less. Mow your lawn at 4 inches or higher. This allows grass roots to grow deep, creating healthier, more robust plants, more carbon sequestration, and better water absorption. Observe No Mow May to encourage biodiversity.
- Shrink your lawn area: Transition parts of your yard to more diverse, deep-rooted habitat: trees, shrubs, flowering plants, berry bushes, and native perennial plants.
Try These Gardening Tips
Minimize use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
Fostering healthy soil and biodiverse ecosystems is the best way to manage pests and diseases.
The manufacture and transport of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers require a lot of energy from fossil fuels. When applied to soils, the substances actually weaken the health of your soil. Synthetic fertilizers emit the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide into the air. Instead, minimize or eliminate synthetic fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides.
Try beer bait for slugs, insecticidal soaps, neem oil, Bt bacterial toxin, and other non-synthetic pesticides.
Plant cover crops, including nitrogen fixers.
Cover crops are plants that are sown between food crops. Keeping the soil covered with living plants maximizes photosynthesis and hence soil carbon sequestration. Cover crops suppress weeds. They increase the soil’s water-holding capacity, which prevents erosion and helps crops withstand drought. When returned to the soil, cover crops provide organic matter and nutrients for later plantings. Peas, beans, clovers, and legumes are nitrogen-fixing cover crops, meaning they host rhizobia on their roots that can take nitrogen, a much-needed plant nutrient, from the air and convert it into forms that can be absorbed by plant roots—in place of synthetic fertilizers.
Plant the Three Sisters.
Corn, beans, and squash are known as the Three Sisters. For centuries, these three crops have been the center of Native American agriculture and culinary traditions. The sisters complement each other in the garden, as well as nutritionally.
Corn provides tall stalks for the beans to climb so that they are not out-competed by sprawling squash vines. Beans provide nitrogen to fertilize the soil while also stabilizing the tall corn during heavy winds. Beans fix nitrogen, feeding the corn and squash. The large leaves of squash plants shade the ground which helps retain soil moisture and prevent weeds.
Grow food!
Home-grown food helps you avoid carbon emissions from food production, packaging, refrigeration, and transportation. Using regenerative methods like no-till, mulching, and cover cropping can also restore what scientists call the Soil Carbon Sponge—soil that is teeming with microbial and fungal life, rich in carbon, and great at retaining water and nutrients. This spongy soil is resilient to drought and flooding, resists erosion, and supports biodiversity.
Choose a wide variety of species, the more the merrier.
Rethink competition among plants! Plants are the best collaborators: look at any natural system and you’ll see diversity and collaboration, rarely competition. Diverse plant life helps cultivate a soil ecosystem that can better store carbon, capture runoff, and improve plant productivity. Incorporate perennial shrubs, vines, ground covers, native ornamentals, and perennial vegetables and herbs. Rotating where you plant your annual vegetable crops helps maintain soil microbial health and prevents plant disease. Consider drought-resistant varieties that are able to withstand hotter, drier summers. Even the lawn can benefit from the addition of multiple species.
Grow for the pollinators!
Bees and other beneficial insects pollinate most plants needed to curtail climate change. Establishing year-round habitat for beneficial insects will increase pollination, predation of pests by other bugs, and attract birds who are pest-management experts. Growing plants that flower throughout the growing season helps attract and sustain declining bee populations. All insects love flowers and especially lots of tiny flowers like you’ll find on many herbs. Consider lavender, mint, borage, sage, thyme, oregano, onion, sunflower, and rose. Diversity begets diversity! Source: WSU extension Climate Friendly Gardening Tip Sheet
From Visually.
We Need Systems Change
Agriculture is one piece of the climate solution, and it is not the only solution. We need systems change. It is the structural systems, not individual farmers, that made modern-day conventional farming widespread and often environmentally destructive.
The 2023 Farm Bill
For climate farmers to thrive and for climate farming to have its greatest impact, we need systemic change. In the US, the Farm Bill will be on the table in 2023, offering an opportunity to reverse policies that are destructive to soil and climate, and to boost regenerative farming. The Farm Bill sets the priorities of the US agricultural system, often encouraging certain crops and production systems over others—for example, soil health-focused programs that help rebuild soils currently receive less than 1 percent of overall funding in the Farm Bill, giving farmers an incentive to keep harming the soil. In turn, the farmers and ranchers who are making the effort to build healthy soils are not supported in their work, and in fact can be discouraged from it. Renewed every 5-7 years, the 2023 Farm Bill will last through at least 2028. All members of Congress have the opportunity to influence the development of the Farm Bill by signaling their support for key issues through marker bills.
We need to change how we feed people. This change can come from consumer demand, but it also needs to come from changes in state and national policy priorities. Speak up for Climate Farming! Tell your representatives to replace harmful subsidies for polluting practices with support for organic no-till farming, managed grazing, and other proven methods for growing food that build soil health and cool the climate. Check out RegenerateAmerica.org, one of the groups working on the Farm Bill. Source: RegenerateAmerica.org
“Just Transition In the Agricultural Sector”
By Stephen Leslie, Cedar Mountain Farm
Farmers everywhere are on the frontline of climate change. I began farming in the Upper Valley in 1996. As a dairy and vegetable farmer, I have seen my crops and livestock subject to the increasing stressors of a changing climate. We experience more extreme droughts and precipitation events and less predictable growing seasons. New insect and plant diseases are proliferating in our region.
We can salute the current legislature for bringing forward climate initiatives such as the TCI and Vermont Green Deal—but we must point out that their focus on transportation and energy efficiency is short-sighted. For a rural state like Vermont, land management represents a huge opportunity to mitigate and heal the environmental crisis. The agricultural and forestry sectors are crucial to the solutions and must be included in any comprehensive legislation addressing climate change.
We can improve farm income and help save the planet by leveraging the state to pay incentives to land managers who use “best practices” to sequester carbon, protect air and water quality, reduce pesticide use, and transition from fossil fuels.
The dairy sector occupies the majority of agricultural land in the state of Vermont and is by far the most important sector in economic terms. The working landscape is also a major asset of the tourism sector—which is the leading economic driver of our state’s economy. Dairy farmers should be given viable options to diversify, reduce the number of cows and grow crops such as hemp, medicinal and culinary herbs, and commodity foods such as grain and legumes for humans instead of livestock. The aim of all these incentives should be to re-establish a regional food system. Consumers should be able to buy a full-diet of food grown within one-hundred miles of where they live—no more California lettuce coming to us on jet planes—but rather healthy organic and bio-regionally produced food—eaten with the seasons.
Even if we were to halt all greenhouse gas emissions today the concentration of Co2 in the atmosphere will continue to rise for centuries because of how much has already been absorbed by the oceans. As we slow down emissions the oceans will release Co2 in a process of equilibration. We must halt emissions but of equal importance is the restoration of our soil reserves worldwide. The most prevalent greenhouse gas is water vapor. There is a fixed amount of water on this planet. Through 10,000 years of soil degradation we have desertified half of the planet’s terrestrial surface and hugely diminished the soil’s capacity to hold water. The only way to safely draw down and cool the planet is to re-build the soil carbon sponge. Building the sponge not only sequesters 3-10 tons of carbon per acre, it also naturally cools the environment by stabilizing the earth’s hydrologic systems by which she has maintained a livable habitat for increasingly complex life forms for one-hundred-and-thirty-million years. Building the sponge creates resilience for our food systems and also mitigates the damage of flooding and drought. It is the single most important task we can undertake to save humanity and all other species from the ravages of abrupt climate disruption.
The USDA, Land grant colleges, and NGO’s should promote the concept of the soil carbon sponge as a pivotal component to drawdown and restoration of the Earth’s natural cooling hydrologic capacities. Teaching the theory and practice of these concepts to all land managers is crucial.
The very best way to sequester carbon and establish food security is to promote regenerative farming practices among every society around the globe. If every individual human being, and every village, town, municipality and city on this planet were dedicated to creating more topsoil through the promotion of small-scale sustainable agriculture we could sequester all the carbon we need to cool and heal the environment, provide meaningful employment and feed all the earth’s people.
Agriculture has been part and parcel of the destruction of the natural world—but it doesn’t have to be so. Vermonters can lead the way by embracing regenerative restorative practices. It is really important to emphasize that we aren’t just talking about farm land and wood lot. Every citizen relies on soil and so every one of us should be incentivized to become caretakers of the land—no piece of land is too small or insignificant to be worthy of reparation and restoration. We need full citizen participation to create food security and restore bio-diversity.
Key leverage points for a Just Transition in Agriculture
- Reward farmers for ecological services. This isn’t only cleaner air, water, and carbon sequestration in soil—the production of nutrient dense food is an ecological service.
- Establish price parity for farm products to ensure that every farmer and farm worker can earn a living wage.
- Institute regional supply management of farm products to keep pricing fair and to prevent industry from forcing out small producers.
- Divert funds that the state currently pays to subsidize tourism to build worker owned milk bottling plants, artisanal value-added creameries, distilleries, hemp processing, community food processing centers, and more enterprises tied to the local food, fiber, and forest harvests.
- Institute land reform for re-settling of climate refugees (many of whom are farmers) and to ensure young farmers have access to arable land.
- Establish cooperative markets and food marketing hubs.
- Establish bio-fuel farms to supply regional needs for transitioning tractors off of gas and diesel. Bio-fuel farms will serve as energy hubs for each region to supply regional farms with fuel for converted tractors. Only bio-fuels that can be grown to balance out as carbon neutral will be used.
- Create incentives for electric tractors. Create incentives for electric tractors to be shared between farms.
- Promote draft animal technology. Draft animal power can play a significant role again on farms, in the forest, and in local transport of goods and services.