This post is part of Natalie Smink’s 2022 Yale Farm Summer Internship Independent Project
This summer I asked myself the question: What is the intersection of ecology, climate change, and agriculture, and how does this intersection point to possible forms of climate change mitigation? Specifically, what does this intersection look like in my home state of Colorado?
Growing up in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado I had very little exposure to farming. My dad kept a garden in our backyard, but whenever I thought of farming I imagined a grain field far off to the east in the plains or scent of manure carried by the winds from feed lots up north. I was ignorant to the impact of agriculture on the environment and its contribution to climate change and even more oblivious to the fact that it could also serve as a solution.
Regenerative agriculture is a farming concept that focuses on the health of the soil and overall ecosystem over the yield and its practices stem from indigenous knowledge. By employing certain practices such as low or no tilling, cover cropping, compost application, and livestock integration, regenerative agriculture fosters a healthy soil ecosystem that requires no chemical inputs and is more adaptable to climate fluxes. Regenerative agriculture works with the natural ecosystems to grow food, while also sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere. The philosophies of its practices also extend beyond the field and into social spaces. The wholistic approach to regnerate the land also calls for people to regenerate their connection with the land and for land to be given back to the communities that have historically farmed it. The current industrial practices that are stripping the soils of their nutrients are reliant on the same government systems that have stolen land from indigenous groups and black farmers for hundreds of years. Thus regnerative agriculture calls for a fight against climate change and a fight for social justice.
Initially, my researching into regenerative farming in Colorado focused on its potential to help protect farmers from the chronic drought conditions that the state faces. Investigating regenerative agriculture in Colorado provided me the opportunity to learn how my home is adapting to changing climates, while also getting to connect with farms in the state. I looked into the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Soil Health Program that is working to educate more farmers on practices that will improve their soil health and identified self-labled regenerative farmers across the state. All of the farms I looked into were small scale farms that offered Community Shared Agriculture programs to their local communities that allow communities members to pay for shares of the farm’s produce. They all used a variety of regenerative farming techniques like no tilling, cover cropping, and compost application. Through a conversation with a regenerative farmer and the implementation of the CDA’s Soil Health Program, regenerative farming practices seem to be gaining momentum through out the state and more farmers are starting to adopt them. This provides hope that overtime these practices will be come more wide spread and will reduce the impact that human agriculture is having on the planet.
Despite this increasing push towards regenerative farming, through out my research into Colorado regenerative farmers, all but one of the farmers that I encountered was white. This observation leaves me with my next steps to continue this project. I hope to continue investigating agriculture in Colorado, but through a more social lens in the future that asks what Colorado is doing to increase land availability to farmers of color. In order for regenerative farming to truely regenerate the land and the people who live on it, it must fight the systems of injustice that continuously disempower BIPOC communities and keep them from the land.