Nebraska farmer Graham Christensen teams up with members of Comunidad Maya Pixan Ixim, a local Maya community center, to plant and harvest a milpa garden.
Milpa, the ancient Indigenous tradition of intercropping, provides multiple benefits to the grower and the community, as well as the soil, the broader ecosystem and the long-term health of our planet.
Kevin Fulton is a farmer in Nebraska who raises cattle regeneratively and grows organic corn and soybeans.
Kevin has escaped from under the thumb of corporate agriculture monopolies by prioritizing profit over yield.
Here’s his story!
Agriculture accounts for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions and contributes to chemical contamination of water resources, but it is uniquely situated to be part of the solution. Agriculture can provide effective actions to mitigate climate change, reduce its impacts and improve water quality while increasing productivity. And the key lies in the soil under our feet.
Effective actions revolve around making sure soil is healthy and alive. When soil has depleted topsoil or little humus, few worms or fungi and other microorganisms, lacking texture and structure, it is no longer an organized living ecosystem. Over years of customary farming practices, most soils have lost organic matter, surface armor, ability to absorb heavy rains and shifted and depleted their biological diversity.
Regenerate America™ Farmer Leadership Council members Wayne Swanson Jr., Dawn Breitkreutz, and Graham Christensen speak on the impacts that adopting regenerative ag has had for their land and businesses, as well as the role of USDA conservation programs in acting as a barrier or benefit.
Regenerate America ™ is excited to announce they will be returning to D.C. to participate in the House Ag Committee’s historic hearing on regenerative agriculture!
The hearing, hosted by Representative David Scott (D-GA-13) and titled “Soil Health Practices and Programs that Support Regenerative Agriculture” will be the first of the House Ag Committee that is dedicated solely to this topic.
Regenerate America™ will be represented by Indiana farmer Rick Clark, who will testify about his experience of dramatically reducing input costs and chemicals on his 7,000 acres of regenerative-organic row crops.
A common concern on “Riverside Chats” isn’t just the climate crisis, but the seeming inability to talk about existential risks like global warming when much of our bandwidth is taken up by the noise of culture wars.
In previous conversations, a concept has come up as a model for what can help undo the damage of the past: regeneration. This is often employed through farming and grazing practices that restore degraded soil biodiversity — sequestering carbon and improving the water cycle.
Ciro Cortez has worked in the restaurant industry since he was a 16-year-old dishwasher in California. Four months later, he was promoted to kitchen assistant, then to cook, and he kept rising through the culinary ranks until he was a chef in charge of an entire kitchen.
After becoming an expert in preparing cuisines including Argentinian and Italian, Ciro owned two restaurants in Florida. He sold those and was looking for a new opportunity when his daughter invited him to Nebraska.
“My daughter told me there were good-paying jobs and I should give it a try,” said Ciro. “Within two weeks, I was working at the meatpacking plant and I started selling burritos there. The people I worked with at the plant liked them very much.”
Today, he owns The Yellow Taco Truck, in Nebraska City, Nebraska, which specializes in food from where he grew up in Mexico.
Growing up on a hill overlooking North Omaha during World War II, Mary Carpenter remembers the numerous vegetable plots, called Victory Gardens, that dotted her Florence neighborhood.
“Everybody had one,” said Carpenter, the reporter’s mother-in-law. “We grew everything – asparagus, potatoes, tomatoes, black raspberries, pears, even grapes. That’s what fed us and supplemented our food.”
Over the ensuing decades, many of those gardens disappeared as grocery stores started carrying seasonal produce year round. Yet 80 years later, everything old is new again.
Drive anywhere in the Omaha metro – West, North, South O, Midtown – and you’ll see a community garden or an urban farm.
Through the leaves and the debris, lies an area of meek land, ready to be improved.
“We are making sure that it is dignified for people living in communities, but it’s also a place that our Nebraska wildlife can cohabitate with us, even in the city,” Gus Von Roenn said.
At 33rd and Patrick is one of many pieces of land that Omaha Permaculture made viable again.
“We’ve touched maybe over 17 different vacant properties and try to improve them in different phases of becoming either a community garden, or a pocket park, or just a green space so people can enjoy it,” Von Roenn said.
Von Roenn is the founder of Omaha Permaculture, who said permaculture changes the way we interact with our surroundings.
In this episode, we’re joined by the team at GC Resolve to discuss the 2023 farm bill, and why it’s such a big deal. What can consumers do to impact how the farm bill is written?
This conversation tackles some of the issues around how the farm bills are structured and geared, and how despite constant conversations around the idea of supporting small farmers, little is done to actually support small farmers in the way farm insurance is structured, just for one example.
