Climate-Smart Agriculture
USDA Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities grant program
As farmers confront the effects of climate change, a national movement toward climate-smart agriculture is underway. At Working Landscapes, we are helping farmers accelerate their transition thanks to a grant award from the USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities.
Together with partner food hubs across North Carolina, we will offer financial and technical assistance to farmers to implement climate smart growing practices. The USDA’s stated goals for Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities like ours are to:
- provide technical and financial assistance to producers to help them to implement climate-smart production practices on a voluntary basis on working lands
- pilot innovative and cost-effective methods for quantification, monitoring, reporting, and verification of greenhouse gas benefits
- develop markets and promote the resulting climate-smart commodities.
Our North Carolina food hubs already serve small farms, including farms led by women and people of color. Many of these farmers are already pursuing innovative methods in regenerative agriculture and food value chains. Food hubs already engage in marketing local harvests, so they are well prepared to promote and deliver climate-smart products to customers.
Small and underserved farms often need help in attaining their production and marketing goals, and food hubs have a track record of assisting farmers with food safety audits, grant applications, and marketing assistance. This project will build on food hubs’ role as multifaceted, locally-rooted institutions in the cultural, economic, and ecological development of a truly sustainable food system.
Participating Food Hubs:
Working Landscapes
Warrenton, NC
Farmer Foodshare
Durham, NC
Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture
Boone, NC
Men & Women United
Delco, NC
TRACTOR Food & Farms
Spruce Pine, NC
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Project Overview
What is Climate-Smart Agriculture?
Climate-smart farming practices reduce the carbon footprint of agriculture by using biological processes to sequester carbon, cycle nutrients, resist pests and provide ecosystem services. What does that mean for the farmer? Improved productivity and livelihoods, making farms more resilient to climate impacts now and in the future.
Climate-smart practices, as classified by the USDA, include methods such as:
- Cover cropping
- Prescribed Grazing
- Forest Stand Improvement
- Implementing a Windbreak
Example: Cover Crop Use
Cover crops are plant species, such as crimson clover, that farmers grow in their fields after a cash crop to improve soil health and reduce erosion. Recently, farmers and researchers have rediscovered the benefits of cover crops and refined methods of cover crop management.
Cover crops can increase soil organic matter, improve soil fertility, and raise soil moisture holding capacity. Over time, that translates to increased crop resilience to weather extremes and reduced need for fertilizer and pesticide, improving farmers’ bottom lines.
These practices also improve water quality, reduce chemical input dependence, and sequester carbon! Despite all of these benefits, cover crop usage is not as well established across North Carolina as it could be. All soils would benefit from the rotational use of cover crops, and funding opportunities like our Climate-Smart Commodities grant program are proven ways to facilitate permanent adoption.
USDA data does not report the success, variety, or diversity of cover crops, which ranges between operations.
How Does the Program Work?
Working Landscapes will help coordinate farmers, food hubs, technical service providers, marketing specialists, soil scientists, and other stakeholders to make this program a success. Climate-Smart Coordinators will operate out of our five established food hubs to do the on-farm work of recruiting and onboarding farmers, then work collaboratively with each farmer to create a Climate-Smart Transition Plan for their specific farm.
Included in each farm’s climate-smart management plan will be step by step procedures for monitoring soil health and carbon sequestration impacts across the farm, implemented in collaboration with soil science experts at NC State University.
Meanwhile, food hub staff will refine their traceability practices to connect the resulting climate-smart farm products with the farm that produced them and their ecological impacts. That information will differentiate climate-smart products in the marketplace, and food hub staff will help establish new and expanded market channels with buyers seeking climate-smart products.
Climate-Smart Success Stories
For over a decade, the team at Kiss the Ground has been collecting stories of farmers, ranchers, indigenous communities, and stewards of the earth who have connected with the power and possibilities of regenerative, climate-smart agriculture. You can hear their stories first hand by clicking here.
At Kiss the Ground’s website, you can also find a huge resource of information and data regarding climate-smart agriculture and how regeneration can shape our future!
Are you a farmer and want to get involved?
We’re looking to recruit up to 85 farms like yours across North Carolina to implement climate-smart agricultural practices and market your products through local food hubs over a five year period. Please complete our interest form to be in contact with us about enrolling your farm in this program.