Climate-Smart Field Day Draws Southeast Growers

A field day targeting climate-smart practices, held at N.C. A&T’s University Farm, is one of several planned initiatives in a USDA-funded project to help farmers in the Southeast improve their soil health, increase their crop yield and market their eco-friendly produce.

Held July 9 at the University Farm, the field day served as an educational platform to promote the project and allow growers from across all five states to learn eco-friendly techniques and strategies. Field demonstrations on the farm, led by Biswanath Dari, Ph.D., natural resource specialist in Cooperative Extension at N.C. A&T and ANR Horticulture Farm Manager John Kimes, included the benefits of no-till drilling, roller crimping, flail mowing, and plastic mulch.

“Most of the vegetable growers we are looking at are diverse, small-scale and underrepresented farmers,” said Dari, who is also one of the project leaders of the Climate-Smart Project.  “We’re trying to incorporate greenhouse gas measurement strategies, increasing soil carbon sequestrating strategies, and better marketing strategies for farmers who are part of this five-year project.”

The Southern Piedmont Climate-Smart Project, led by agricultural non-profit Rodale Institute, is a five-year initiative targeting small-scale vegetable farmers across five states – North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, and Georgia – to test the environmental and socio-economic benefits of cover crop termination and planting into residue, as well as develop consumer marketing strategies to promote climate-smart produce. N.C. A&T is one of 14 partner organizations on the project.

According to Dari, the project is supported by $25 million funding by the USDA’s Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities program.

“The Southeast is different from the rest of the country when it comes to extreme weather events, such as flooding, extreme rainfall, or even our recent drought here in North Carolina,” said Dari. “Our equipment is designed in order to disturb the soil less, which would maintain more of the soil’s microbes and, in turn, allow for a better vegetable yield, as well as be more invigorating for the soil’s biology and creatures underneath.”

Rodale Institute’s Kristie Wendelberger, Ph.D., climate-Smart project director, said the project intends to “bring the small farmers to the table of the USDA.”

“Through this project, we’re going to help our farmers enjoy more recommendations that support more economic and social programming, which will allow them to use more climate-smart and regenerative techniques,” said Wendelberger. “We’ll also help them get into markets based around sequestering greenhouse gas emissions and getting credit for their techniques.”

The group plans to target up to 500 farmers across the Southern Piedmont to participate by enrolling and managing a portion of their land according to the program’s planting and cover crop protocols through 2028. Enrolled farms will be supported by $6 million in cash and non-cash incentives. Additionally, these farmers and 30 farmers markets within the five states will learn consumer messaging strategies to help promote the practices on their farms.

Paul Sorah, left, gives a new paper-based mulch a feel as N.C. A&T State University Farm employees coordinated a field demonstration about mulch laying during the Climate-Smart Farmer Field Day at the University Farm. Cooperative Extension at N.C. A&T is working with partners, including Rodale Institute, to educate vegetable farmers about climate-smart farming practices.

“We are also putting consumer surveys out across the Piedmont to learn more about the public’s understanding of climate-smart commodities,” said Wendelberger. “From their point of view, what does it mean to be ‘climate-smart’?  What does it mean to farm sustainably?  How do they value that, and how could we communicate the importance of the extra work our farmers are doing to make their products more valuable?”

Ray Jeffers of B.R. Jeffers Farms in Person County participated in the field day and said he was “excited” about USDA’s push for climate-smart commodities and the equipment seen at the event

“Most small farmers like myself do not have the equipment to adopt a lot of these practices,” said Jeffers, “but with this grant, it allows us to do that over the next four years, but to see the importance of it on the production increase that we may see so that when we’re out of the program, we’ll still see that importance in order to continue these practices.”