USDA ‘CLIMATE SMART COMMODITIES’ GRANT RECIPIENT
In the summer of 2022, Mt. Folly applied for funding under the USDA Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities. That Christmas our great gift was being selected for the honor of bringing our project to life. Over the next seven months we worked out a formal agreement with the National Institute for Food and Agriculture. Starting in August of 2023 we began to design and build. We had a kick-off field day and piloted our first "Heritage Food Festival". We met with our first farmers and learned how to navigate program enrollment as private citizens with Federal compliance responsibilities. We started partnerships: with Dr. John Settimi at Eastern Kentucky University to measure soil carbon and verify our work, with the Savory Institute and Holistic Management International to teach holistic decision-making for farmers, with Rural Action Ohio to co-host a silvopasture training for June 2024.
Our project is called “Building whole-farm designs and market infrastructure to provide premiums for Climate Smart Farming among mid-sized agricultural enterprises in the Ohio River valley”. So, what does that mouthful of a title mean?
Over the next five years we commit to offer you a program in the great Ohio River Valley that will:
1) connect 100 farmers with $10,000 grants that help them to use climate-smart practices;
2) provide technical support to improve land health and farm profitability, training folks in holistic management and other best-practices;
3) compare NRCS data on the benefit of certain farming practices in our geography with actual measurements of soil carbon changing over time; and
4) deepen collaboration to secure markets and meet logistical/ distribution challenges, improving regional-scale farm and food processor profitability and offering healthier alternatives than the global-industrial food system can.
All of this has the goal of bringing carbon from our atmosphere into the earth, healing the soil and keeping farmers with mid-sized operations on the land.
Many thanks to USDA for digging into this critical work, helping to redesign agriculture for a new millennium with a $3.1 billion investment in 135 awarded projects < Workbook: Partnerships For Climate-Smart Commodities (usda.gov) > across the country.
I’m feeling beyond blessed to be in the role of Program Lead, in my own hometown, and my own home river valley bioregion. I can’t wait to be working in community, with you, on what the world needs now.
