Edible Blue Ridge Spring 2023

FROM THE LAND

Breaking Ground and Rising Up

Farmers combine indigenous farming techniques from around the world to combat carbon emissions

I “I don’t just work the soil to grow food. I work it because it helps me and heals me. It’s therapy for me,” says Maricruz Lopez, one of the co-coordinators of Jubilee Climate Farm. The six-acre farm, a mosaic of regenerative farming techniques, is less than ten minutes outside Harrisonburg’s city limits. Drawing on wisdom from around the world, Lopez and the other co-coordinators Tom Benevento and Irma Serrano Carballido strive to work the land in a way that also cares for the planet. Jubilee Climate Farm is entering its third season of carbon farming. This type of farming is designed to sequester carbon, encouraging plants’ natural process of absorbing carbon dioxide and storing it in the soil. When farmers use regenerative practices that don’t involve plowing or tilling, the carbon stays stored in the ground instead of in the atmosphere. One component of the farm is agroforestry. Considering that trees can store a significant amount of carbon in their roots, trunks, branches and leaves, integrating trees into crop and animal farming has the biggest impact in carbon farming. Benevento cites research stating that 35% of grazing land and cropland worldwide would WORDS

SARAH GOLIBART GORMAN

JUBILEE CLIMATE FARM

PHOTOS

be suitable for agroforestry. Those converted farms could sequester about 3.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year, more than the an nual emissions of all of India, the third-largest producer of green house gasses. The team at Jubilee is not only farming for the planet, but to honor generations of farmers and earth caretakers who came before them. Lopez and Serrano grew up in Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico, respectively, farming crops like bananas, coffee and a variety of vegetables alongside their parents and grandparents. The techniques they learned as children are honored at Jubilee in conjunction with other global farming strategies. Elements of Jubilee’s silvopasture system have been adopted from their native Mexico. In the silvopasture, fruit, chestnut and black locust trees live in harmony with sheep who meander through the bands of pasture and trees, eating fallen nuts and fruit and in turn nourishing the soil. Metepantli, a drought-resilient Mexican terracing system dat ing back more than 2,000 years, captures rainwater and stores it in the soil. Combined with a Filipino erosion-prevention strategy called Sloping Agriculture Land Technology (SALT), a technique

10 | edible blue ridge SPRING 2023