Mendocino County’s Carbon Farmers
Harnessing Agriculture to Help the Planet
By Connie Higdon
I’ve been roasting chiles this week—my favorite post-harvest activity—and thinking about food, dirt, and carbon. California’s recent fires have made it clear that the climate crisis is now, not ten years away. Our planet is burdened with excess carbon in its atmosphere, and one of the major sources of that pollution is agriculture.
But what if the food we eat didn’t only fuel our bodies but also helped save our planet? What if the world’s agricultural lands could help offset atmospheric carbon? Right now in Mendocino County, ranches, farms, and vineyards are doing just that—storing more carbon in the soil than they release through crop and livestock production.
The key is nature’s carbon cycle, the process through which carbon atoms move from the atmosphere to the earth and back into the atmosphere. In this closed loop, the amount of carbon doesn’t change. What changes is where the molecules end up—in plants and soil or in our air. By using methods that capture more carbon in the ground, farmers and ranchers can help to shift the skewed carbon cycle.
More than 15 local food and fiber growers are engaged in a multi-year experiment to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases and improve soil health. The “carbon farming” they practice uses the natural growth cycle of plants to pull CO2 out of the air, break it down, and store the carbon in soil organic matter and plant roots. Biodiverse and organically enriched dirt, it turns out, maximizes carbon capture.
At Strong Roots Farm in Potter Valley, Sorren and Gina Covina baled 25 acres of mixed grass and clover hay this past May. The previous year’s crop had been large—over 900 bales—due to a long rainy season. In the winter and spring of this year, however, less rain fell and the weather was cold. But something else had changed at Strong Roots.
“Last November, we began implementing the carbon farming plan I wrote for our Healthy Soils Program grant application,” Gina told me, as we looked out across long rows of amaranth, tomatoes, squash, and herbs. “The first step was to spread a thin layer of compost everywhere on the farm.”
Compost works in part by increasing plants’ ability to capture and use carbon, which produces crops that are healthier and larger. Sorren happily noted that the first hay cutting of 2020 produced 1,176 bales of hay—276 more than the prior spring. “And the garlic is huge this year,” she added. This increase in yield means that an investment in soil carbon results in significant gains for the farmer. Gina, who operates Open Circle Seeds, noted that such a change enables her business to produce more seeds to sell in a year when, due to the pandemic, many people are turning to home gardening.
According to Jeff Creque of the Carbon Cycle Institute (CCI) in Petaluma, “Agriculture is the one human activity that actually can transform itself from a net atmospheric emitter to a net storer of carbon.” Healthy soil-based farming turns pasture and croplands into deep sinks for the carbon that commercial agriculture strips from fields by excessive tilling and use of chemical fertilizers. It not only offsets on-farm outputs like fossil fuel use, but also improves the productivity of livestock and crops.
CCI’s modeling shows that carbon farming on 25 million acres of California’s arable land could sequester (store) 42 million metric tons of atmospheric carbon annually. Removing this amount from the atmosphere would render our state carbon neutral.
“Adding even a half-inch of compost leads to more grass growth, and that means more carbon capture,” Jeff pointed out. “Now, some of that carbon ends up in the soil, and that increase is measurable. Also, an increase in soil carbon leads to greater water holding capacity. Which means, in the subsequent year, we capture more rainfall on the compost-treated plots and grow even more grass. So, each year—and we now have ten years of data—we see more carbon coming into the soil, at a rate above that of our untreated control plots.”
This measurable increase in carbon storage begins with the development of carbon farming plans tailored to individual land conditions and uses. The grower usually collaborates with the county’s Resource Conservation District and other soil and water specialists. Together, they evaluate the present state of the property and clarify goals for cropland, pastures, forests, and riparian areas (creeks, springs, etc.), identifying opportunities to enhance carbon capture.
Locally, multiple organizations assist with carbon plans. These include the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District (MCRCD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), CCI, and Fibershed, a textile fiber group based in Marin County. Several farmers and ranchers have funded plan implementation strategies with grants from the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) Healthy Soils Program, the NRCS, and private foundations.
Katy Brantley, the MCRCD’s soils program manager, finds that a wide variety of the county’s farmers and ranchers express interest. “Mendocino County has a lot of agricultural diversity,” she pointed out. “We’ve just completed carbon farming plans with Pennyroyal Farm in Boonville and the Apple Farm in Philo, and we’re starting several more throughout the county. Thanks to the latest round of CDFA Healthy Soils Program grants, Haiku Vineyards in Ukiah and the Boonville Barn Collective will begin implementing climate beneficial practices this fall.”
The diversity of food producers involved in carbon farming highlights our county’s unique agricultural community. Speaking of the Magruder Ranch, Kyle Farmer noted, “Carbon farming looks to a different paradigm for agriculture, one not based only on short-term gains. Wendell Berry put it this way: ‘Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest.’ It’s a matter of how far beyond the immediate yield you can be thinking.”
Carbon farming also boosts shorter-term production, he added, “because carbon is such a useful molecule to have around. For example, if you’re feeding cattle with a bale of hay and some of that gets trampled into the soil, should you keep that from happening? Yes, you lose a little hay, but you also gain soil carbon.”
The Magruder Ranch has practiced elements of carbon farming since Mac Magruder took over management from his father forty years ago. Mac implemented rotational grazing—moving cattle from pasture to pasture on a schedule that allows grass recovery. Kyle and his wife Grace, Mac’s daughter, have introduced additional strategies to increase soil health and biodiversity, writing their first carbon plan in 2017 with the county Resource Conservation District.
“We’ve gone forward with spreading compost on every acre of land that’s flat enough,” Kyle told me. “We’re doing the soil tests to see how much carbon increase we can get in our upper hillsides.” They also are planting oaks and faster-growing trees to create silvopastures—tree-studded grassland. Planting trees in perennial pastures results in minimized soil loss and maximized water retention. In the midst of climate-related drought, water-holding capacity is critical.
Peggy Agnew, another Potter Valley rancher, runs 30 to 40 sheep on irrigated pastures and some hill slopes. Over several decades, she has crossbred her flock to develop a breed with soft sturdy wool for spinning. She and her husband are in the first year of implementing a carbon plan, funded by the CDFA’s Healthy Soils Program.
Through the Mendocino County Wool Festival committee, Peggy connected with Fibershed, a regional group that links textile fiber growers with resources and promotes farming methods that enhance soil and watershed health. Working with them and Agricultural Extension staff, she focused on compost spreading to enhance her ranch’s carbon capacity. Like Sorren and Gina, she spread a half-inch of compost in November 2019. Over the next three years, she will test the soil for carbon increases.
“Knowing that we’re improving soil and pushing back against climate change gives what we do more meaning,” Peggy shared. “If I can do this, then so can my neighbor. We’re creating scientific data that demonstrates how much small farms can do.”
Has she seen a difference since applying the compost? “My irrigated pastures usually get grazed down by summer’s end. That hasn’t happened this year. And the sheep are loving the extra clover and grass.”
Across the county in Caspar, Fortunate Farm is finishing up the third year of their carbon plan implementation. Farm manager and co-owner, Gowan Batist, says that the techniques they’ve included so far—composting on a large scale, reducing tillage, and cover cropping in the big vegetable patches, eradicating invasive gorse thickets, and rotational grazing for their sheep—have made a significant difference in the farm’s soil and fertility.
“North Coast Brewing Company supplies us with spent hops and grain,” she told me as we toured the compost yard. “We did our original carbon plan with the Carbon Cycle Institute and the MCRCD. Now we’re also working with Fibershed, because of the sheep.” Fortunate Farm has received funding assistance from the NRCS and a private foundation.
Gowan’s plans for the farm include building up the native plant landscape, intercropping vegetables with native grasses and wildflowers, and introducing hedgerows of elderberry, thimbleberry, and wax myrtle to reduce wind intrusion and hold soil along the creek. “I started out gardening with really low-income kids in the county schools,” Gowan shared. “I see our carbon farming as a continuation, an expansion of my environmental justice work, helping the planet.”
A major goal of the Carbon Cycle Institute and California’s Resource Conservation Districts, as well as many carbon farmers and ranchers, is to scale up these strategies and engage as many growers as possible. “We’d like to see full funding for a carbon farm program through the Resource Conservation Districts all across California,” Jeff Creque said. “There needs to be a significant commitment to the work by society at large.”
The Mendocino County food and fiber producers who practice carbon farming are in the vanguard of this critically important direction for agriculture in the age of global warming. Together with localized food transport projects like the MendoLake Food Hub and watershed restoration and protection programs, they lead the county’s push-back against the climate crisis. As consumers, we can commit to this movement by supporting our local carbon farms, ranches, and wineries, and the businesses that use and sell their products.
For more information on carbon farming:
Carbon Cycle Institute www.carboncycle.org
Fibershed www.fibershed.org
Mendocino County Resource Conservation District www.mcrcd.org
LandSmart www.landsmart.org/programs-services/landsmart-carbon-farm-plans/
North Coast Soil Hub www.soilhub.org/
California Department of Food and Agriculture, Healthy Soils Program www.cdfa.ca.gov/healthysoils/
US Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/site/national/home/
Connie Higdon writes on land conservation and environmental issues and is working on a book exploring local solutions for climate change. She lives in Ukiah and can be reached at higdongannon@gmail.com
