Comic: This Research Farm Is Pioneering Regenerative Ag to Fight Climate Change | Civil Eats STAGING
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“[We’re] building a national collaborative of tech companies and developers, as well as researchers, producers, external service providers, universities, and food companies. Anybody who's transforming the way we farm.” Dave Herring, Executive Director (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)

Comic: To Fight Climate Change, This Research Farm Is Pioneering Regenerative Practices

In this illustrated report, we explore how the Maine-based Wolfe’s Neck Center is breaking new ground in soil health, soil monitoring, and other climate-smart technologies.

By

July 19, 2023


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As the question of how to mitigate climate change at the farm level heats up, Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, a sustainable working farm in coastal Freeport, Maine, is heavily invested in researching the best agricultural practices. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)
the center is a pioneer in soil health, no till farming, and in building technology that makes monitoring soil easier. they’re also experimenting with feeding cows local seaweed in the hopes of reducing the release of harmful methane gases (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols) The farm’s not just in it for its own soil; Wolfe’s Neck is part of OpenTEAM, a group making climate-smart technology available to other farmers through an open technology platform. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)
“[We’re] building a national collaborative of tech companies and developers, as well as researchers, producers, external service providers, universities, and food companies. Anybody who's transforming the way we farm.” Dave Herring, Executive Director (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)
OpenTEAM has spent the last four years developing a set of open-source tools that together give a picture of the health of a farm system, capturing everything from soil to biodiversity to wildlife to carbon capture and photosynthesis. Now, Wolfe’s Neck has plans to scale up OpenTEAM and support farms in adopting climate-smart agricultural practices thanks to a $35 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities program. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)
Dorn Cox, Wolfe’s Neck’s Research Director and author of the newly published book The Great Regeneration, was drawn to the expansive vision at Wolfe’s Neck. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols) Cox was raised on a farm and became enthralled with open-source technology’s potential for creating tools and informing farms of all scales, particularly those that sell directly to consumers in their local communities. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)
“The quote I like is by Howard Buffett: ‘Every farmer has 40 seasons to learn and to get better.’ But if you have a 1,000 farmers, you've got 40,000 seasons that you can build on.” (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)
OpenTEAM provides workshops and regular “collabothons”. Collaborations have included 3D-printed seed planter designs for vegetables and Quick Carbon, a new handheld spectrometer that measures carbon in a teaspoon of soil. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)
openteam also helps farmers access satellite imagery to compare when plants bud from year to year. Farmers can share those observations on the network to help other producers make critical planting decisions. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)
Cox gave the example of a tool called the roller-crimper, whose blueprints were made publicly available by the Rodale Institute and Farm Hack, as a model for successful open-source technology. The roller-crimper allows no-till farmers rolls over cover crops, crimping the stem and killing the plant without herbicides. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)
No-till is an excellent way to preserve carbon in the soil, but it has been mainly practiced by conventional farmers, who use herbicides to kill weeds and cover crop. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols) OpenTEAM allows farmers to share their knowledge about timing, crops, and other tricks of the trade to make adopting no-till much easier for organic farmers. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)
sharing the blueprints allowed openteam to collect data from the U.S. and beyond. this allowed them to synthesize a wide range of localized practices aimed at building organic matter and storing more carbon in the soil. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols) “This [new] funding allows us to take what we've developed with our partners and help implement it on farms and producer networks across the country and around the globe.” (Herring) (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)

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Nhatt Nichols is a multidisciplinary artist and writer raised on top of a mountain in the Okanogan, Washington State. A graduate of The Royal Drawing School in London, she uses drawing, poetry, and comics to break down political and environmental issues, finding new ways to meet people where they are, and ask them to reach deeper into their ability to care and take action. Read more >

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