Regenerative Skills

Farm viability depends on much more than what happens in the field. While we often focus on production and farm management, many of the biggest challenges farmers face are shaped by what happens.

After harvest: processing, packaging, distribution, and access to markets. As processing facilities and post-production industries become increasingly consolidated, primary producers are left with fewer options for where and how to sell their products.

Not long ago, much of this work happened on farms or through small-scale enterprises in nearby towns. These local processing systems allowed farmers to capture more value, reach customers more directly, strengthen rural economies, and create meaningful employment close to home.

In today’s panel, we’ll speak with farmers and small-scale processors who are keeping these local industries alive while finding new ways to make them viable in an era of mass production and industrial consolidation.

Together, we’ll explore practical opportunities for adding value to raw farm products, the real challenges of setting up micro-processing operations, and the lessons learned from people already doing it.

We’ll also look at how farmers can start their own processing enterprises or collaborate with others in their community to transform their products, diversify income, and rebuild more resilient local food economies.

After the biodiversity panel from the last episode, I got to thinking about how protecting biodiversity is so often reduced to the life forms that humans value. The ones we find beautiful, friendly, or otherwise useful to us directly. Cuddly mammals, majestic birds, colorful butterflies and flowers, etc. 

 

In many ways though, these living beings are only able to survive and thrive if the critters that we dislike are abundant in the same spaces. Many flowers are pollinated by bugs most would find annoying. A lot of cuddly mammals feed on weed species or our own crops. Eagles and owls need an abundance of rodents and reptiles if their populations are to grow. Many invasive exotic species are working tirelessly to restore damaged and imbalanced ecosystems. 

 

It’s kinda like trying to lose body fat in just one area of your body. You can’t just pick the parts that are desirable to you and expect the whole interconnected system to accept that. Collectively we need to embrace the restoration and stewardship, especially of the lower trophic levels of the food web that support all the higher levels above. 

 

In the last panel we touched a little on the tolerance and adaptation required to share space with predators and birds that threaten livestock and crops, recognizing their role despite the challenges that come from having them around. 

 

Today I’ll be revisiting some of my favorite interviews from previous seasons in which we talked about three specific categories of overlooked and undervalued wildlife. 

 

My hope is that we can welcome these into a broader conversation about biodiversity, and maybe even convince you to work to promote greater diversity and open pollination of your crops and livestock, the full range of insects, and even rethink your management of invasive species in your land or on your farm.

This month we’re tackling the challenges and benefits of wildlife in all its forms. Wildlife and wild spaces are often spoken about as if they're at odds with the goals of farms. We often talk about battling weeds, deterring predators, and eliminating competition from undomesticated forms of life. It doesn't need to be this way though, and as farmers build beneficial relationships between all forms of life around them they're finding incredible benefits to the farm as well. In this panel we'll speak to farmers who've made care for the wild a part of their management practices. They'll share what they do to make their land more welcoming to all the life around them and how the health and productivity has responded as a result.

It’s been over a year now since Climate Farmers let go of its Carbon credit program, and yet I know that many people who’ve been following our company don’t know the full story about how we got started in the carbon market, why we let it go, and what we’re continuing to do to help improve carbon markets to assist farmers in their transition to regenerative management.


Today I’m going to fix that as my dear friend and colleague Esther Dalkman takes us on a journey through the history of our former carbon credit program and what we’re doing with 5 years of learnings from trying to use the carbon market to finance regenerative agriculture.

 

Along the way we’ll hear from the former managing director of Climate Farmers, Ivo Degn, about his learnings and observations of the wider carbon market, as well as Joao Martins who used to be our business lead and is now leading the new company Terra Madre which is continuing our carbon credit legacy as they work with farmers in Portugal to access transition finance for a wide variety of ecosystem services beyond carbon.


By the end we’ll talk about what it would take for the carbon market to adapt to the needs of real farmers and we’ll get candid advice on what farmers should know  if they’re considering participating in a credit program before they sign up.

The only real way to learn and gain experience in farming is to get your hands dirty and put knowledge into practice. For that reason farms play an essential role in training others to get into this sector and navigate the challenges and learning curves of making a living on the land. While most of the farms in our network have shown interest in offering educational opportunities, actually becoming a school is outside of the capacities of most of them. At the same time there are many ways to offer training from offering courses and workshops to student, volunteer, and apprenticeships. In this panel we’ll explore many of these possibilities from the perspective of farmers with many years of experience helping others get their foot in the door as well as those who are just starting to explore how to participate in offering learning opportunities. We’ll cover essential considerations, key learnings and advice, and new ideas that our panelists are exploring to improve their offerings for both learners and themselves. Join us live to get your own questions on how to set up or improve your trainings answered live by our panelists.